www venezuelanalysis com/articles php?artno=2130An Engaged Political Culture in VenezuelaMonday. Sep 10. 2007By: Cynthia PetersAt a little stand off an uneven road switchbacking its way up and down the Andean mountains we stopped for a thick syrupy sweet cafecito. It comes in a tiny two-swallow sized cup providing just the right hit of caffeine to act us alert on the alter curves which paradoxically are as numbingly repetitive as they are perilous. The two Venezuelans we met there also on a coffee end struck up a conversation. We talked amiably for a few minutes about their bring home the bacon bringing potable wet to nearby villages their thoughts about the Chavez government and the role of grassroots advisory boards (“consejos comunales”) in determining what projects the government will act in which communities.“What about Chavez’s push towards socialism?” I asked them.“Socialism is about sharing,” one of them answered. “If I have three shirts and you have none. I should at least furnish you one of exploit.”By Venezuelan standards it wasn’t a particularly remarkable conversation. We had many others like them – some quite favorable toward the country’s revolutionary move and others less so. But for those of us accustomed to U. S political grow where so many citizens are so fatalistic about being able to compete a meaningful role in society the conversation was indeed remarkable. It’s not that populate in the U. S don’t care about their communities and imagine ways to share what they have. My uncle a conservative church-going North Carolinian with a portrait of George furnish on his fridge and a son-in-law in Falujah has made himself personally responsible for a be of highway near his home. Every few days he walks the length of it picking up trash. “Mostly it’s cigarette butts,” he says and he can’t believe the never-ending supply of them. But he doesn’t object. He wants to do his move. He’s happy to do his part. “You got something else in object?” he asks me. “You evaluate there’s something else I could do to make a difference – especially when you’ve got all those corporations keeping the politicians in their pockets?” Collecting cigarette butts may not exactly be engaging bring home the bacon but apparently it is no where near as coma-inducing as attempting to parse yet another sound bite from another candidate that sounded just desire the previous one from the other candidate from the other party!That’s the U. S political culture in a nutshell. It feels more engaging to remove a be of highway from tiny bits of be than it does to act in the political process. Not so in Venezuela. “One thing you can say about Chavez,” said one lay categorise Venezuelan named Ramon. “is that he’s got everyone thinking about politics.”“But I don’t like him,” he added. “I voted for him at the beginning because I wanted to get rid of the old regime but now he’s gone too far. He’s scaring away the middle categorise. He wants to take away our property. We’ve worked hard for what we have.”We met this man who runs his own business distributing fly and mosquito repellent at a restaurant in the land town. El Playon filled with Venezuelan tourists enjoying one of the last weeks of vacation. During an hour-long conversation he let us experience that he agrees in principle with socialism. He feels grateful that Chavez is a strong international voice against the Bush agenda. But he feels Chavez has change state a dictator. His ministers wear Rolexes and control fancy cars. And besides if the poor would just bring home the bacon harder they could enjoy all the same privileges as the lay class. It should not objectively be easier for a poor man to furnish up one of his three shirts than it is for a wealthy man to give up a portion of his much larger economic cushion. But the wealthy man has worked very hard to justify his unequal access to comforts. He’d rather construct an clarify ethic that helps him conclude that he deserves what he has rather than acknowledging the insecurity that goes with luck. This was perhaps the most significant lesson for my two daughters who traveled with their dad and me to Venezuela during the last week of August – the pure dumb luck that makes them comfortable while so many others in the world are left without change surface the most meager comforts. They were acquainted with statistics about income inequality. They had heard that the vast majority of the people on the planet live on the equivalent of one or two dollars a day. But they had never seen mile after mile of shanty towns built out of mud and brick and pieces of bill come in scavenged from the align of the highway. It’s challenging to direct the cruel facts of it in your mind without succumbing to some ideology that says all is the way it should be.“It’s.
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