VENEZUELA'S REVOLUTION - THE 2ND DECADE

by Goods for Cuba Campaign &

the Island Solidarity Centre Society
Profile of a People's Movement with author, journalist and political activist Federico Fuentes. Mr. Fuentes will give an overall and up to date picture of what  the Chaves government has been able to accomplish in the last 11 years since it was elected into power.

 

He will touch on issues such as women's role within the government and their accomplishments, the formation of Community Councils and what they represent for Venezuelan society, the threat of the new US military bases in Colombia, workers control over many sectors of the country's production and the Bolivarian Integration Alliance between a number of countries in solidarity with each other.

Admission by donation. Sponsored by the Goods for Cuba Campaign & the Island Solidarity Centre Society

Federico Fuentes
 
Born in Argentina in 1981, Fuentes grew up in Australia. He is a collaborator of the Fundacion Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM), linked to the Ministry of Popular Power for Higher Education in Caracas, Venezuela. He has been writing from Caracas for most of the last two years as a member of the bureau of the Australian Green Left Weekly and now as part of the board of directors of Venezuelanalysis.com. Together with Marta Harnecker, he heads up two of the lines of investigation in the CIM: “Political instruments for the 21st century” and “Popular participation in public management.”
 
As part of his research, he has co-published two books with Marta Harnecker, based on interviews with leaders of the Movement Towards Socialism – Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (Bolivia), and the Party of the Movement Towards Socialism (Paraguay). They are MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento político que surge de los movimientos sociales, Caracas: CIM, 2008; and Conociendo al P-MAS, Asunción: Germinal, 2008.
 
Fuentes is currently preparing a book based on interviews with leaders of the Workers Party of Brazil and another on the experience of worker co-management in the electrical sector in Venezuela. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Venezuelan-based newspaper Marea Socialista and Luz y Fuerza, the newspaper of the Federation of Electrical Workers in Venezuela.
 
Fuentes’ articles are frequently published in Venezuelanalysis.com and, together with his bureau colleague Kiraz Janicke, in  Green Left Weekly. He is the editor of the widely-read Bolivia Rising blog. Since 2003, he has regularly travelled in South America to report on events such as the 2003 World Social Forum and the election of Evo Morales in 2005.
 
Fuentes’ articles in English have also been published in Monthly Review, MRZine, Socialist Voice, The Bullet and Relay (Socialist Project, Canada), Links, ZNet, and Counterpunch. In Spanish, he has been published in Aporrea, Rebelion, America XXI and other publications and websites.
 
He is actively involved in the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network, of which he was a national co-convenor (2008-9), and has organized several solidarity delegations to Venezuela. He is also a member of the Socialist Alliance (Australia).