“Michael Fox, Carlos Martinez, and JoJo Farrell cut through the mist that usually surrounds discussions of Venezuela to enter a world of impressive political and cultural diversity. By bringing the reader to the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution – to its people –they reveal its profoundly democratic and humanistic core, letting the persistent, kindhearted, unselfish, thoughtful, believing, enduring people who make the Revolution a living thing speak for themselves. Venezuela Speaks! is a geography of struggle, a sociology of passion, and an ethnography of hope, of the unrelenting insistence that people have a right to control their own lives, and that in doing so, a better world will be made.”
-Greg Grandin, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.
“Venezuela Speaks! provides an unprecedented window into the grassroots social movements driving Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Rather than the typical analysis focused on President Hugo Chavez, the pages of this book are filled with the voices of the people systematically left out of previous accounts. Venezuela is in the midst of a fascinating and radical political transformation. Unfortunately most media coverage and literature filters developments through the top down lens of Chavez. In this groundbreaking book the Venezuelans who have the most at stake – students, laborers, indigenous people, activists, and more – candidly share their lives, politics, and aspirations. Venezuela Speaks! provides a platform for Venezuelan revolutionaries to speak for themselves, to tell their own stories, to use their own words to explain the Bolivarian Revolution. Unadulterated, captivating, and a must read for anyone who wishes to truly understand today’s Venezuela and its historic political process.”
-Chesa Boudin, author of Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America and The Venezuelan Revolution: 100 Questions – 100 Answers.
“Michael Fox, Carlos Martinez, and JoJo Farrell cut through the mist that usually surrounds discussions of Venezuela to enter a world of impressive political and cultural diversity. By bringing the reader to the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution – to its people –they reveal its profoundly democratic and humanistic core, letting the persistent, kindhearted, unselfish, thoughtful, believing, enduring people who make the Revolution a living thing speak for themselves. Venezuela Speaks! is a geography of struggle, a sociology of passion, and an ethnography of hope, of the unrelenting insistence that people have a right to control their own lives, and that in doing so, a better world will be made.”
-Greg Grandin, author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.
“The authors of this book are not starry-eyed ideologues; they are experienced activists who have traveled the world observing diverse efforts at ending poverty and injustice. They portray a Venezuela in struggle that we can all learn lessons from in our efforts to save humanity from itself.”
-Dr. Kevin Danaher, Co-Founder, Global Exchange and Green Festivals.
“I once asked a woman in Caracas if she was a follower of President Chávez. She replied, “No. He is following my ideas.” Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots, gives the English reader an opportunity to hear some of these ideas directly from the mouths of those whom Chavez is trying to follow.”
-Charlie Hardy, author of Cowboy in Caracas: A North American’s Memoir of Venezuela’s Democratic Revolution.
“This collection of brilliantly organized interviews embraces the complexity of Venezuela’s hopeful revolution without simplifying or understating the country’s grassroots fervor. It brings the voices of those who share the burdens and benefits of transforming Venezuela directly to the reader, straight from the hearts and streets of a nation going through historic changes.”
– Benjamin Dangl, author of Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America and editor of the Latin American news website Upside Down World.
“Today when Venezuela speaks, people across the globe listen. But even within the revolutionary camp, Venezuela speaks with many voices, not just Hugo Chavez’s. And unless we pay attention to the different notes sounded we will fail to understand the remarkable, uneven, often-contradictory, but vitally important changes taking place in a country trying to find a new path in the 21st century. The great virtue of this new volume is that it gives us access to many of those voices. Venezuela Speaks! is therefore a kind of radical hearing aid – appearing at a time when North Americans especially would benefit from doing a lot of listening.”
-Max Elbaum, author of Revolution in the Air, and editor of the War Times/Tiempo de Guerras.
“Venezuela Speaks! is a timely collection of interviews with social movement activists in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez. The most important areas are covered including the indigenous, Afro-Venezuelan, women, student, urban land, labor and peasant movements as well as community media. The interviewers have asked the right questions, as the narration deals with key issues presented from a bottom-up perspective. Most important is the struggle from the bottom to achieve a paramount goal, namely “relative autonomy” vis-à-vis the state and party led by Chávez. This book is a must-read for those who have gone through the secondary books on the Chávez phenomenon and have gotten a fair share of analysis and theory. Venezuela Speaks! represents a necessary balance to these works by providing extremely interesting insights from the “people” in their own words.”
-Steve Ellner has been a professor at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela since 1977. His most recent book is Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict and the Chávez Phenomenon.
“This book is a must read for all who are interested in the critical dynamic between grassroots social movements and sympathetic governments. It is clearly not enough to elect somebody different, though that helps; movements must stay mobilized and must still struggle in contested terrain for every real gain. Venezuela Speaks! shows us how.”
- Peter Rosset, author of Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform and Food is Different.
“The revolution within the Revolution are the many, powerful voices of the everyday people of Venezuela. They have suffered and survived the era of the oligarchy; they rose up in El Caracazo (1989), dreaming of another world; they voted in numbers and often for the Bolivarian regime, and they came out on the streets to defend their government in 2002. These are the people. They have words. Venezuela Speaks! gives us a taste of them.”
- Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.
“When we hear about Venezuela, we often hear about the Chavez administration, or the opposition. But we hear very little about the ordinary people who are running the literacy programs, staffing the missions, and creating a radio collective or a worker cooperative. This book gives us some of those voices, which are essential to broadening the debate about contemporary Venezuela.”
- Sujatha Fernandes, author of Who can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chavez’s Venezuela.
“The word pueblo in Spanish is perhaps untranslatable in a single English word. It means “the people,” but it also means what brings people together and holds them together, all those things that people can do to unite and stand united; it is a sense of place, community, and struggle. Venezuela Speaks! is in a way a book-length translation of the layers of meanings of pueblo. Including 26 in-depth interviews with active participants in the vibrant social movements gripping the country, Venezuela Speaks! is a gift to all those who have followed the Bolivarian Revolution from a distance always wishing they could sit down and talk for hours with the people at its grassroots. There is much to learn from the wisdom, commitment, and creativity of these Voices from the Grassroots, and so much do be done with what we learn.”
- John Gibler, author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt.
“Venezuela Speaks! provides a long-overdue corrective to the assumption—made all to often by scholars and news media—that “Venezuela=Chavez.” Instead, this accessible and engaging volume explores citizenship from below, delving deeply into the on-the-ground, lived experiences of the Bolivarian Revolution from the perspective of grassroots leaders. The book uses 18 first-person narratives by participants in a range of grassroots struggles in Venezuela, including around land reform, gender and sexuality, labor, arts and media, ethnicity, and various forms of student organizing. These accounts are striking for their honesty—showing not only hope but also ambivalence and doubt around Chavez and the project of the Bolivarian Revolution—and for their evocative character: They bring the revolution to life, giving it a dynamic and moving quality. (The accompanying photographs greatly enhance this effect.) The book is also amazingly up-to-date, with its finger on the pulse of contemporary Venezuelan grassroots experience. Venezuela Speaks! will appeal to academic and popular audiences alike, making a remarkable contribution to the growing body of grassroots accounts of Latin America’s “turn to the left.”
- Benjamin Junge, PhD, Asst. Professor of Anthropology, State University of New York-New Paltz