Creating socialism

I just came back from a weekend in the east of Venezuela where I went with a chilean friend to give a seminar/workshop on sexuality and gender at a camp for 32 young people between 13-16 years. It was held by a national movement that work with farmers asociations and local communities, seeking to teach "socialism" and not just speak about it. The kids were at the camp during four days and the workpasses were about communication, the water issue, capitalism, agroecology and sexualism and gender. It was a mixture of nationalities among the "facilitators" (us giving the workshops) but the kids were from the local neighbourhood, and they had all come voluntarily, to learn, discuss and meet other young people. It was truly amazing to listen to some of them speak, 14 year old boys who had a vision and a conception of the world which I think few in their age have. There where though more guys than girls present and it was very difficult to get the girls to speak at all. Sadly the structural signs of quiet women are global, which maybe isn't too surprising but still quite hard to see how the same order is being reproduced also in the younger generation.

In our pass we discussed puberty, sexuality, the reproductive aparatus, contraceptives, homosexuality, abortion, gender, equality, machismo, etc. It is difficult to get a group of 32 14-year olds to keep their attention for 4 hours, especially with 30+ degrees and an open spaced "lecture hall" where they can come and go as they want, but the discussions were sometimes wild and lively. The hardest thing though was when we discussed abortion and confront the argument: "It is not right to deny the babys right to live" when it is based on a religious value... how on earth do one even enter that discussion, when the opponent is throwing God in your face? How to win over the almighty? Wooosh, it is difficult.
"Well now...you see, I don't believe in God, and I'll rather give the mother a chance to live her life". That kind of thing just don't bite on them. But with the help of some of the other people I think our point of view at least was understood and the whole thing seen in a new way.

Speaking with one of the girls the day before giving the workshop she told me that her older sister had become pregnant when she was 11 years old and today (9 years later) she had 4 kids. She had married her boyfriend (18 years old by the time of the first pregnancy) although today they were divorced. Her other sister had had her first baby at 13, and today 16, she had 2 kids. These things are but too frequent still in this country, especially in the country side. Asking the girl (14 years old) if she wanted kids her self she said, "Yes, but not now, I am too young". Yeeeah! You go girl! I felt happy to be able to be in circumstances where these young girls at least get a chance to educate themselves about the dangers of not using contraceptives and their rights to make their own decisions.

As a true socialist camp they didn't miss out on the constant remindment on the values that such a society pretends to rely on: solidarity, combating egoism, respect of others and participation from all. It is clear how easy it is to speak about that we would like to achieve a socialistic society, but so much harder to make the connection between the nice words of respect and the practical implementation of it, meaning that I should keep quiet when someone else speaks and raise my hand if I want to intervene. That is also why these kinds of gettogethers are so important. Today in Venezuela a lot of people have the rethorical part of the revolution clear to them, but the corruption is wildly out spread and devastating. Even among the local councils that are supposed to be the grass roots, the people! It is sadly enough not too rare that the house of the president of the council is both bigger, robuster and nicer than the others'....how is that possible?

But the fantastic part is that it also exist a whole bunch of other nice fighting people and so there is no need to lose hope.
With their left hand in the air they are shouting: "Patria, socialismo o muerte - Venceremos!"
Tjoohoo.

This week I will probably move to a new apartment in the center, so that I will have a lot closer to my work. Since 2 weeks I am working in a Center for Environmental studies, doing my practice there until july when it is time to go home to Sweden. Until now the experience has been interesting and I hope and believe it will continue like that. And there is unlimited amounts of free coffee!! My god. Hm... maybe that is actually a bad thing for me.
Well.




Finally I put a foto of a man carrying around a frame with Simón Bolívar in the demo of may the first. He was dressed as a military and looked very happy!

Oh maaan, why are they soo predictable

I was walking on a quite quiet street from the supermarket on my way home. Had my earphones stuck in my ears, listening to a downloaded podcast from Sweden about China's growing pollution problems in their big cities (ok I am completely addicted to swedish P1, maybe one could argue that it is a bit overkill, living in Venezuela and all, but what can I say, I am just not ready to move on from the first step in the twelve step programme - acknowledge that you have a problem...). So anyways, all of a sudden I become aware of the fact that a car on the other side of the road is slowing down and that the driver (a man around 30-35) is obviously asking me something. I take out the earphones (!!) to understand what he is saying. He wants to know where he can find a cash machine. I happened to know exactly where there was one since I a few minutes earlier almost had walked straight into a guy standing in line to one (it was an extra intense moment in the radio programme...). And so I started to shout the directions to him from across the street, but with cars running in beween it was quite difficult to make myself understood. So after a few tries I just crossed the street instead. The directions I gave were very easy to understand, since what he was looking for was just a few hundred metres away on the same street we were on. But for some reason this guy kept asking and just not understanding at all. And then all of a sudden he says:
- You are not from here right? Where are you from?
me: - Ehh, no, I am from Sweden.
guy: - Really!? Haha, so what are you doing here?
me: - I am studying.
guy: - Oh, really, where?
me: - At Simón Bolívar.
guy: - Wow, so what are you studying?
me: (with an obvious face of boredom) - Biology
guy: - Yeah?! haha (what on earth is funny with a swede in venezuela studying biology at a university???) So... you like Venezuela?
me: (sigh, it would be interesting to keep a record on the number of times people have asked me that) - Eh... sure, very much!
In this moment my extraordinary theatre experience is helpfull, since I show with my whole body (like body theatre you know!) that I am very stressed and really need to go (this came out of the combined facts of "me standing almost in the middle of the road, being an easy target for the cars passing by and not minding me" and of "the total lack of interest from my side to keep on a chat with this un-known person whose intentions I didn't know, but out of experience just too well could imagine").
guy: -So you want to go, it looks like you are in a hurry.
me: - Yes, I am, I have a lot to do.
guy: - But you should take it easy on this street you know, it can be dangerous.
me: - Well I think it's ok, the big street is just over there and I live close to here.
guy: - Where do you live?
me: - Here in Baruta, Piedra Azul.
guy: - Ah, yeah that is pretty close (now, one might think it is strange that the guy obviously knows the different parts in the area by their names, but does NOT know where to find a cash machine...)
guy again: (not minding my comment 2 seconds earlier that I was in a hurry) - Sooo, do you have many friends here?
me: (looking at him almost with a smile on my face... out of the predictability of his whole being) - Yes I have about one zillion friends here.
guy: - Oh, so do you want to be my friend?
me: - hahaha... eh... what? eh.. hrm , hehe, wahhhh. Well, I am sure you are a really nice guy but, NO. I have to go now.
guy: - haha, but wait, we can be friends...
me: - You take care now, and by the way, the cash machine is just around the corner!

Now maybe this whole conversation doesn't seem so extreme to you who read it. And in fact, it is not extreme at all, it is actually a very common and highly frequent thing that happens almost all the time. Maybe you people don't see what bothers me so much about it, maybe it is a seemingly alright conversation... well, what can I say. I just hate that I have become customized to immediately when you meet (or sit next to, or stand in line behind) or for some other reason come in contact with a guy/man presume that he in the end will ask for your number, because... I don't have a f-king clue of why!! It has become quite tiresome after some months of that all the time. And very boring!
Warning me of the dangerous street we were on gave me a good but a very bitter laugh, since he is completely unable to understand that what constituted my biggeset threat in that moment, was him!

Finally I can give you a tip for a documentary about Venezuela, made by the network "Hands off Venezuela", which should indicate where the filmmakers have their sympathies. Well worth seeing: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8259680613061191794
If for some reason the link doesn't do it for ya', try searching "No volverán" at Google or YouTube.

Equity vs. equality

This week I participated in a three day long course in "Gender related violence" organized in Baruta, the municipality that I live in, originally aimed for people who work within different public institutions, police and lawyers. I was invited because I wrote an email to the municipality asking about their politics concerning the problem. It turned out that they didn’t have a specific or strategic plan for how to manage these issues, but according to article 29-30 in the new law (see last post) they are obligated to work with prevention and also to create different service possibilities for women who are victims of violence. So, this course was a first step in that process, that is, to make these people aware of the problem, it's magnitude and complexity, and to prepare them to handle it in their work.
The discussions were many and loud, but very dynamic and progressive. One specifically interesting aspect was the seemingly unanimous opinion… or maybe I should describe it as perception, of the whole gender issue as being a question of “equity” and not about “equality”. No one in that room wanted equality, since it was expressed as a general truth that the differences between women and men inhibit this from being possible. Equity in this sense is referred to as an equal valorization of performances, work, etc. of women and men, whereas equality would be a 50% share (or divide) of everything in society between women and men.
Maybe the mere fact that they just didn’t go deeper into this sensitive area can increase their possibilities to act more efficiently. And probably within their respective fields of work, that is the most important thing, since a huge problem in Venezuela regarding violence against women, is the lack of proper institutional service and competence of the workers. But to solve the fundamental problem behind the violence against women, one needs to focus on the organization of the society and on the educational system, and within these areas channel other perspectives on “women-men”, feminine-masculine, power structures within the families and within the society, etc. This was also the general conclusion of the whole course, still without having touched the underlying questions of “What IS femininity and masculinity?”, “How far do the social constructions of these concepts reach?”, among others.
I think these questions are very important indeed since I do believe that many people are caught up in the traditional way of perceiving what is “right” or “normal” and what is “wrong” or “abnormal” when it comes to the attributes and attitudes of women and men. I would like a more open discussion about those issues, based on curiosity and criticism, in Venezuela as well as in Sweden. But for now… in Venezuela… trying to tackle the immense problem of gender based violence… well, maybe the work just needs to be put in action, and then...as women in Venezuela reach stronger positions and gain more and more self-consciousness, they can decide if they want to raise these specific issues, or maybe completely other issues that women here feel are urgent.

Thursday was the last day of the semester and my last day at the University of Simón Bolívar. So I am now on vacation, and in two weeks I'll be starting my intern-ship with an environmental organization in the centre of Caracas and work there until the end of July.
The photo is from the final presentation in Ecology, me and my group are proydly posing infront of our poster. It was a project about predation of crabs and snails on mollusc and cirripedios living on the roots of mangrove trees... Ok. If anyone wants to know more about that, you just let me know eh'! =)

Ele, Ale and me!

Anarkism och Våld mot kvinnor

Asså visst, kanske det gått ett tag sen jag skrev sist. Och nej, jag tänker inte köra igenom värsta uppdateringen på allt som hänt här i landet sen dess. Men det är en hel del kan jag lova. Som bara det att det utväxlades rätt hårda ord mellan Chavez och Uribe i Colombia över de senares intrång i Ecuador och bombning av en hel massa sovande männsikor ur den colombianska FARC-guerillan, där den näst högsta ledaren, Raúl Reyes, dog. Hans laptop beslagstogs och sedan har en massa intressanta, och i många fall tvivelaktiga uppgifter kommit ut. Bland annat om Chavez' och Venezuelas relation till den terrorist-stämplade FARC-guerillan. Chavez kallade hem ambassadören från Colombia, och placerade ut militärposter längs hela gränsen, som markering gentemot Colombia att det de gjorde i Ecuador inte kommer att hända i Venezuela, men också som ett tecken på stöd till Ecuador. Det uttalades till och med varningar om förestående krig mellan Venezuela och Colombia. Men konflikten tycktes få ett väldigt snabbt och uppsluppet slut på ett toppmöte för några veckor sen. Uribe bad om ursäkt, Chavez sjöng och gav tydligen ett mycket bra tal, och Correa i Ecuador mjukades upp. Så skakades det hand och svors trohet till den latinamerikanska enheten och konfliktlösning via dialog.
Allt frid och fröjd som det verkade... tills det några veckor senare kom uppgifter om att de bomber som använts av Colombia i Ecuador varit av en typ som normalt används av USA-militär och som Colombia enligt vad som varit känt innan inte innehar. Det skulle i såfall ha varit USA som stod för attacken mot guerilla-gruppen vilket skulle ha satt hela operationen i ett ännu mer kritiskt läge. Det är ju välkänt vilka enorma mängder finansiellt o militärt stöd USA ger till Colombia i deras krig mot terrorismen och knarkhandeln. Colombia och Uribe hade dock bedyrat att USA inte hade något med ingreppet i Ecuador att göra... vad som stämmer och inte vet jag inte än.

Nåja. I övrigt har jag hängt runt lite med anarkisterna i stan. De är en rätt begränsad skara på kanske högst 40 pers, varav dock ca 20 ger ut en mycket bra och läsvärd tidsskrift: Ellibertario.com som jag rekommenderar till dem som läser spanska. De har även artiklar på engelska. Det är verkligen spännande att diskutera med dem kring den bolivarianska revolutionen som Chavez anför i Venezuela. Hur de ser på den, på Chavez och vad de hade önskat istället. Det är en ganska hård inställning från anarkisternas sida gentemot "2000-talets Socialism" som implementeras i Venezuela av Chavez. Som anarkister föredrar de ju ingen statsmakt överhuvudtaget, men å andra sidan är det ju ändock med en socialistisk retorik som den nuvarande regeringen driver igenom sin politik. Det är extremt intressant att jämföra den kritik som anarkisterna framför, med den som jag satts in i av alla uppe på mitt universitet. Och det är nästan som om nån kört copy-paste, för argumenten, ordval och mycket annat är slående lika trots att många studenter nog skulle sky en anarkistisk titel och vice-versa.

Några av de yngsta medlemmarna har sedan några veckor tillbaka börjat planera att inreda ett ödehus och göra det till ett hus öppet för vem som helst, med aktiviteter och verkstäder, musikrum, kök och allt sånt. Förra helgen följde jag med till huset för att se. Det ligger mitt i ett välbärgat bostadsområde och dess ägare stack därifrån för mer än 15 år sen. Av all graffitti på väggarna står det tydligt att det är ett välkänt hus bland många unga, men säkerligen också av hemlösa och andra nyfikna. Så deras idé är helt enkelt att städa upp allt som är förfallet, reparera de trasiga väggarna, dra ledningar och måla om för att göra det till ett aktivitetshus. Ett litet problem är bara att det inte är deras hus, vilket samtidigt är lite av idén. Men hur ska man få alla andra användare av huset att vilja samma sak när det är en högst brokig och odefinierbar skara... ett dilemma. Men det är ett otroligt häftigt hus!! Dock väääldigt mycket jobb kvar innan det går att börja använda det.










Så i övrigt har jag nog mest varit begravd i artiklar, intervjuer, konferenser och kurser och dylikt i temat "Socialpolitik och våld mot kvinnor". Mycket att ta till sig men väldigt spännande samtidigt. För precis ett år sen kom en ny, typ, grundlag ut rörande Kvinnors rättigheter till ett liv fritt från våld. Det är en mycket radikal och heltäckande lag med potencial att ändra och förbättra många aspekter kring detta problem. Men det största problemet vad gäller de venezulanska regelverket är just att kunskaperna om lagen och ännu mindre om problemet som sådant i många fall saknas hos de profisionella som skall applicera den, men också hos alla kvinnor som innehar alla de rättigheter som den innehåller. Det finns dock rätt stort intresse för frågan som jag uppfattar det och om inte annat så är det ett rätt tacksamt politiskt klimat för tillfället att genomföra stora och genomgripande policyförändringar. För är det nåt som revolutionen i Venezuela inte kan neka, så är det lika rättigheter till alla, åtminstone i retoriken.

En del resor har också hunnits med in emellan. Det var ju påsklov till exempel. Jag åkte iväg med några andra utbytesstudenter till en flod i Amazonas, med ett gigantiskt vattenfall som mål, mitt inne i djupaste djungeln. Efter två dagar och mååånga långa timmar i en liten motorbåt och under het sol så kom vi fram till en stor flodstrand. 2 timmar upp i bergen var vattenfallen. Vi kom fram vid nio på kvällen, fullmånen lös så starkt att det bildades en regnbåge av dess sken!

Fear

So what is the actual gain of being so afraid of everything that might or might not happen that you restrain your life to the point where every posible danger is avoided... if this also means that you miss out on a whole bunch of nice things, possible encounters, experience and new influences?? In this country, many of the people I daily meet and have around me (people who have the fysical and financial opportunities to choose where to go and where not to go) seem to live (and pass on!!!) a constant fear and concept of an ever ruling danger being present where you expect it to be... that is, not even where you least expect it to be.
To explain this a little better... it is quite commonly known among many of these people that some places in town one just don't go to. For example, few people think it is a very bright idea to go to the center of Caracas, and even if it sure has a high frequence of crime and violence, there are limits to the emphazis one should place on this danger. Especially when I have started to realize that the supposedly justified advices these people give me (of places to stay away from) don't have a very firm knowledge base and that they often don't have a clue about what they are really talking about.
Some of these people live their lives completely apart from the mentioned danger and it is amazing to notice how different lives people can live. In one and the same country, in one and the same city and even within parts of the city, exist parallell universes... created and sustained by whom... not really determined. By the government, by anonymous capitalists, by the very own people who live in them...? Well. I hate it. It is such a nasty form of discrimination. And it is not even an obvious discrimination, since the majority of the people with the good luck of living in the better off universe don't see their part in the sustaining of the whole system. Whatever it is...
So, ok. it is messed up. Out of these differences in standard of living it is scaringly clear from where the hard knocked resistence against Chavez and his ideas of change come from. Why change a system and a society that has given you opportunities to climb higher and gain a real good level of livelyhood? It exists a paradox of human fear when it comes to changing from something known and secure, to something un-known... even though this change actually in the end will create an even better situation for you (and a whole bunch of others!!). But if what one has today is good, then why take the risk of changing it, when it might result in a worse situation??
The concluding question of this is: How make better off people in this country want to "risk" their economic and social standard for the cause of making it better for the majority?
Tricky.

Beauty queens and big breasts

Ok, so Carnaval passed, one of the biggest holidays in all of Latinamerica, you know the carnaval in Rio and all that. Well, me, a classmate and Petra decided to go on a roadtrip to lake Maracaibo to see a unique nature fenómenon called Los Catatumbos. These are flashes of lightning that are present every day during the year. No one can explain why these discharges happen so frequently, and it is only there, in the whole world, that one can witness this. Exciting and an excellent plan for carnval, since everyone else was going to the beach, which would leave this place empty! Just one small problem... it is about 1000 km from Caracas. From an environmentalistic point of view, that sucks. And what sucks even more was that we were going to do the whole thing by car... three persons in one car. My god. That, I can assure you, would never have even been seen as an alternative if I would have been in Sweden. But here, well, there were no buses going to where we wanted to go, and the car just seems to be the obvious means of transport. Ok, so that sucks as an excuse. Scheisse. I am a bad bad bad environmentalist... the story continues.
On the way there we made an overnigt stop in Coro to visit another classmate. Coro is a colonial town with a nice old center and about 15 min out of the town one finds these strange desert like "strips" where you can walk around on pretend to be a beduin in Saudi Arabia. Or one can do acrobatic stuff on the top of one of the sandy mountains, that's what I did.
Later in the evening we went to a small village further away and we ran in to the prepartions for the big happening that evening... the beauty contest!!! Posters of young women in bathing suits were put up all over the place and people were already gathering around the stage. Inspiring reggeaton music made the whole sensation even more intense and my travelling buddies and I started to evaluate the candidates. Who was the best one, that is, most beautiful... right?! Well, my latin friends went for Ingrid straight away, but I thought Andrina would make it, she was a little bit more exotic (that is what I consider exotic). Later during our road trip it became obvious how popular these kinds of beauty contests are in Venezuela. Every little town has there own and the girls are young, very slim, all with long hair and the majority with big breasts. I guess one could define them as "Tripple A:s", a term used to describe a certain type of woman: 90-60-90 (cm), medium tall/tall, long hair and normally operated breasts. The woman ideal! It is possible that one or two were "Double A:s" (nice body, medium tall and a beautiful face)...
I wanted to stay and see them come out on the stage, but the show wasn't about to start until much later, so we left, without ever getting the chance to know who in the end got to be the beauty queen...
Plastic surgery in Venezuela has become something which today is considered to be normal and almost a requisite if you want to make it to the top, working in areas where you need to sell products, but as well within different service business. But the reasons for getting your breasts operated are more than a carreer thing. Lots of women do it simply for the estetique, something which of course has a very relative base. Different cultures have different ideals of beauty, and the value of being beautiful and attractive, although I most of the time think that it has turned quite global. Now, maybe that is a consequence of globalization as well.
Walking around in any city in Venezuela and one can be certain to see at least a bunch of girls with their breasts done. The female dressing in this country is quite homogeneous, normally with an décolletage (it is only a question of how deep). Having done a surgery to enlarge your breasts is something lots of women are proud of, which normally means going for an even deeper décolletage. Comparing to Sweden where it is almost reverted in terms of openness about an operation, where women try as long as they can to simulate their operated chest as being the real thing...
So why do women feel this need to live up to the ideal in such a high degree that they are prepared to operate themselves, pay a lot of money and take the physical risk it means? It is not even a once in your life thing, since the plastic things only last for about three years, and then you will have to do it all over again. Well... I asked a friend who is about to go through with an operation within a few weeks. She said that her reason was simply that "I want to... for me! It is not for anyone else, for boys or anything like that, it is just that I want to. I will feel better, I want to dress in other types of clothes..." I guess that is a reason as good as anyone. But I can't help to take a sceptical standpoint towards this way of reasoning. Because... from where does the contentness of looking in a certain way come from? There is some kind of twisted and sad paradox working with the minds of the women who think like that. They feel happy and content with their new looks, which is a happyness as valid as any other, but not taking in to account that the foundations of this happyness consist of an ideal created and sustained by the society, and which says that she was not good enough as she was.
So how much should one sociologize about this? There are still many women living in this society who never will operate their breasts, and live happily anyways.

It has gotten to the point where a breast operations has become a "common" (of course we are talking about people with an economic state more or less well established) 15-years birthday present (a very celebrated happening in Venezuela). Considering the immaturity of a 15-year old body it just seems rediculous to let such a person go through with something like that. Not even mentioning the twisted perception of ideals the parents are maintaining and passing on to their children, fucking up another generation.
Well... to be continued, for sure!

More photos from the Roraima-trekk 2-6 jan

1 23
4 56
7 89
10 1112
1. The group we went with, looking at the nearby mountain Kukanan.
2. Me and Linda.
3. Me on the road.
4. On the top of Roraima.
5. The Guyana jungle spreading out infront of us.
6. The view from the northern top of Roraima.
7-9. The view from the southern top.
10. Linda and Cinthia. Linda got ill the same day that we began the trekk, and she struggled with throat ache and a wet nose the whole trekk through.
11. The last wall up to the top.
12. Going back down...