NACLA Update 02/19/2009 - An Important but Risky Victory for Venezuela and for Socialism

New on nacla.org

An Important but Risky Victory for Venezuela and for Socialism
by Gregory Wilpert
The ten percentage point victory (55-45%) that President Chávez and his movement achieved on Sunday represents a very important victory for the effort to create socialism in Venezuela. However, Chávez and his supporters ought to recognize that this victory comes with a certain degree of risk because it increases the Bolivarian movement's dependency on its charismatic leader.
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Chiapas Under Siege by Global Industries
by John Ross
Chiapas is threatened by "four horsemen" of development: tourism, biofuel production, oil drilling, and mining projects. As for the Zapatista movement, which recently turned 25, John Ross says it continues to "demonstrate the capabilities of collective action." Nonetheless, Ross claims that Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Marcos' recent "public posture has been disastrous for the rebel cause."
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Venezuela's Referendum: Media's Double Standards
by Steve Rendall & Isabel Macdonald
With Sunday's Venezuelan referendum on term limits, we can expect to hear a lot about Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez's "plan to become president for life" and its reflection on "Venezuela's battered democracy," as the New York Times editors put it around the time of Venezuela's last (failed) term limits referendum.
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The Minga of Resistance: Policy Making From Below
by Deborah Poole
Minga is a Quechua word meaning "collective work" with wide currency among popular and poor sectors, both indigenous and mestizo, of the Andean republics. The Cauca-based minga of 2008 was grounded in the territorial and cultural demands of Colombia's indigenous peoples, yet it is a movement that now extends across the Andes, engaging indigenous and non-indigenous sectors in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
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