Venezuela Speaks!

Overview

Participants offer insight into an intriguing and widely misunderstood revolution

A collection of interviews with activists and other contributors, this compelling oral history details Venezuela’s bloodless uprising and reorganization. For the last decade, Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” has captured international attention. Poverty, inequality, and unemployment have all dropped, while health, education, and living standards have seen a commensurate rise—and this chronicle is the real, bottom-up account. The stories shed light on the complex facets within the revolution, detailing the change in such realities as community media to land reform, cooperatives to communal councils, and the labor movement to the Afro-Venezuelan network. Offering a different perspective than that of the international mainstream media, which has focused predominantly on Venezuela’s controversial president, Hugo Chavez, these examples of democracy in action illustrate the vast cultural, economic, and racial differences within the country—all of which have impacted the current South American state.

Reviews

“A very important book in the growing literature of books on Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution . . . provides an unfiltered participant's perspective on Venezuela's incredibly diverse social movements and, in the process, dispels the notion that President Chávez is the only one who counts when trying to understand Venezuela.” —Gregory Wilpert, author, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power

"Encyclopaedic in scope, with a superb introductory history, extensive footnotes, a helpful list of abbreviations, explanatory maps and photos, Venezuela Speaks! caters equally to newcomers and those with a pre-existing knowledge of the subject." —Peace News

"This book will prove valuable to those interested in understanding Venezuelan popular movements, their current connections to the state, and the contemporary use of testimony. This book represents an important step towards recognizing the diversity of voices among the grassroots movements in Venezuela today." —Mester Journal UCLA

Author Biography

Carlos Martinez recently served in Venezuela as the program director for Global Exchange, where he coordinated dozens of delegations to Venezuela. His articles have been published in Common Dreams, Monthly Review Zine, and on www.venezuelanalysis.com. He lives in Berkeley, California. Michael Fox is a journalist, a reporter, and a documentary filmmaker based in South America. He has covered Venezuela extensively as a writer for www.venezuelanalysis.com, and his articles have been published in Earth Island Journal, the Nation, NACLA, and Yes Magazine. He is the producer of the weekly radio headlines on www.venezuelanalysis.com, cofounder of the internet radio program Radio Venezuela en Vivo, and codirector of the documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas. JoJo Farrell worked in Venezuela as the program director for Global Exchange, an international human rights organization. A journalist and former reporter, he teaches and lives in Brooklyn, New York.