Federico Fuentes
During the swearing-in of more than 300,000 people to the "battalions" of the Miranda Command on September 9, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez, who is seeking re-election through a massive grassroots effort led by the command, reminded the hundreds of thousands attending the rally what was at stake in the December 3 election: "Don't forget that this Miranda battle is truly confronting, once again, North American imperialism. That is our true contender and on December 3rd of this year we are going to deliver a new defeat to North American imperialism."
In order to achieve this aim, Hector Navarro, who is part of the national leadership of the Miranda Command, explained to Green Left Weekly that a "great mobilised army" has begun to be established that will "involve a structure that we are calculating will incorporate more than 700,000 people".
Navarro, who was in Australia as part of a special presidential envoy to the Pacific region, was the first minister for higher education in the Chavez government and was a Venezuelan representative in the Andean parliament before resigning to take up his role in the Miranda Command.
Navarro told GLW that the issue in this election isn't winning the vote. "Our challenge goes beyond winning; we believe there is no problem there. The opposition is very divided and President Chavez at this moment counts on — even the most conservative polls give him — minimum 60% support; even polls funded by the opposition give Chavez 70% support ... We can say that from that point of view it will be easy to win the elections."
Revolutionary democracy
"Our challenge is that we cannot give ourselves the luxury of there being a great abstention", explained Navarro. He said that although abstention may not be problematic for a "conventional, traditional government", it is a concern for Venezuela's government because it is trying to make a revolution, "which means incorporating people into a revolution for the people". The revolutionary forces need to incorporate people into the electoral process beyond just voting, "understanding that democracy is not only the vote — the vote is a particular element, a very small part of a real democratic process".
When there isn't a "clearly identifiable enemy", he said, "the people do not feel motivated to wage the battle". But Navarro pointed out the Venezuelan people do face a tremendously powerful enemy: "The issue here is that our real challenge is not the opposition in Venezuela, we have to be absolutely conscious of this and clear on this point: our challenge at the moment is hegemonic imperialism, which is represented by its manager, its director-general, who is [US President George] Bush."
He said that this "great global company" — imperialism — is the real adversary, "but because it is not an enemy that the people have right in front of them, it is not directly visible, we have the task of trying to understand it more than just seeing it; we need to feel it more than see it".
Exposing imperialism
"That is why our campaign is more directed at revealing this 'other enemy'. It is a campaign for the creation of consciousness, because it implies a greater intellectual depth to know that the enemy is Bush and hegemonic imperialism rather than just a single candidate of the [Venezuelan] opposition."
It was with this aim that the Miranda Command re-election campaign was launched — to raise the political consciousness of people and prepare them for the coming battles against imperialism. Such a campaign, according to Navarro, requires not the media but personal contact with people "in their neighbourhoods, in their homes, in the hospitals, in the schools".
The Units for Electoral Battle that were set up to defend Chavez in the 2004 recall referendum — a US-backed effort by the opposition to prematurely end Chavez's presidential term — shared a similar structure to the Miranda Commands. However, the new structure aims to go deeper into the community in order to wage an ideological battle.
So while from the national level right down to the voting table structures have been set up to organise the troops into battalions and platoons, Navarro said that two other parallel structures are also being activated: "We are also organising within the different social sectors — indigenous people, students, workers etc. — each social sector is being attended to in a particular way.
"There is also another structure that attends to people in their homes and their workplaces, so that we are not just covering where people vote, but also where people work or study, and where people live."
"It is like a game of soccer, where each person is marking another", he explained. Each member of the Miranda Command has the responsibility of convincing 10 other people to vote for Chavez and to be part of the revolutionary process.
"Venezuela has a defect, the precarious living conditions in the urban areas of our country. There is a high level of poverty, a poverty that we have been reducing in important amounts, but there is still a level of poverty and informal housing ... so to use addresses from the electoral roll as a reference point is very unreliable.
"Instead we must attend to the people, give them the necessary face-to-face attention ... we need to go to every house and convince them that there is an enemy in the country — that an enemy does exist and that is global hegemonic imperialism."
The struggle for socialism
"Our gains cannot be measured simply in the electoral sphere because the electoral [contest] is already won", Navarro explained to GLW. "We need to think about how we can use the electoral process in regards to the creation of consciousness, in regards to the political education of the people. This is very important.
"Furthermore, it is the only thing that will give us the victory we want ... there has to be an elevation of consciousness so that the people can understand that we are looking for a superior objective. And the issue of socialism is of course a grand objective ...
"President Chavez put forward this proposition very valiantly not that long ago ... He put this forward as a challenge, 'We are going to develop socialism' and President Chavez declared this revolution to be a socialist revolution. But what is this thing called socialism? What is the 'socialism of the 21st century?'"
Navarro said that it was a discussion that needed to be had, because "we can be very clear on the principles of socialism but there have been many socialist experiments and the majority failed because of errors of the actual processes, because of capitalist errors within socialism".
"That is what happened with the experiment of the Soviet Union, it is an experiment that failed because of the errors committed, by the capitalist deviations that occurred within that socialist process. That is why we are going to make use of this time [the election campaign] to elevate the level of discussion, lift the political level of the discussion on an issue as important as is socialism."