After a decade in power, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution faces a newly multilateral Washington DC and global capitalism’s most significant crisis in a generation. In order to properly understand the hopes and impediments for the future of the Revolution, I argue, it is first necessary to consider the current trajectory and series of accomplishments it has made. In this review-essay, I consider the three most recent and comprehensive works on the foreign and domestic situations in Venezuela in English ‐ Eva Golinger’s (...) Bush vs Chávez, Gregory Wilpert’s Changing Venezuela by Taking Power, and Steve Ellner’s Rethinking Venezuelan Politics. (shrink)

With few exceptions, philosophers working on immigration have not taken up the topic of epistemic injustice, primarily, I imagine, because immigration justice is often too narrowly conceived of as encompassing moral and political concerns rather than epistemic ones. But the more I think about the injustices immigrants endure on a daily basis, the more I take this to be a mistake; epistemic injustices must be seen as a central aspect of immigration injustice too. In what follows, I will demonstrate how (...) this is the case. More specifically, after providing an overview of the nature of epistemic injustice, I will highlight some examples of it in the lives of displaced Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia. In doing so, I hope to show why discussions about immigration injustice must include identifying and confronting epistemic wrongs. (shrink)

This paper is emphatically focused in the analysis on the indigenous problem such as it had been ruled by law in the different Venezuelan Constitutions since the foundation of the Republic in 1811. Our purpose does not go as far as to treat the ancestral indigenous problem in Venezuela because this would exceeds the limits of our study; although, we will do some references in relation to this question.

De la fin du XVIIIe siècle à 1830, l’Amérique hispanique est entrée dans l’ère des révolutions atlantiques. Sur les côtes du Venezuela, dans les années 1790, les échos des révolutions de France, de Saint-Domingue et d’autres îles des Antilles ont contribué à la floraison de révoltes et de conspirations aux mots d’ordre nouveaux. Les demandes de liberté des esclaves et d’égalité des métis s’inscrivaient désormais dans un nouvel horizon d’attente révolutionnaire. Cependant, la monarchie hispanique était toujours capable de mobiliser des (...) troupes pour défendre l’ordre établi. À partir de 1806, le Vénézuélien Francisco de Miranda, ancien général de la Révolution française, tenta de coordonner, d’abord sans succès, les efforts des premiers indépendantistes. La première indépendance fut proclamée à Caracas en 1811 dans un contexte de dislocation de la monarchie hispanique, à la suite de l’invasion des troupes napoléoniennes et des conflits entre péninsulaires et hispano-américains. Les patriotes proclamèrent l’égalité civile en mettant fin aux catégories socio-raciales d’Ancien Régime, mais maintinrent l’esclavage. Ce n’est que progressivement qu’ils incorporèrent des esclaves aux armées en échange de la liberté. Malgré ces libérations par les armes, l’alliance avec Haïti et les tentatives de Simón Bolívar, l’indépendance ne coïncida pas avec l’abolition de l’esclavage, qui fut finalement proclamée au Venezuela en 1854. (shrink)

The Venezuelan migration crisis has displaced over six million people and is the Americas’ largest forced migration. Nearby countries have received the majority of the displaced and initially showed an impressive welcome to Venezuelans, regardless of whether they may be considered migrants, asylum seekers, or refugees. However, host country responses have mainly been uncoordinated, siloed, and impromptu. This paper examines the solidarities and tensions within the individual country responses of Venezuela’s closest Latin American and Andean neighbors: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, (...) Chile, and Brazil. The number of displaced people leaving Venezuela has steadily increased since 2015 yet limited long term-planning and inclusion of migrants in host communities has led to a growth in xenophobia. Additionally, many Latin American host nations have erected new barriers that make legal entry or residency forms more difficult for migrants to obtain. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded these issues as host countries grapple with supporting and offering resources to their citizens in addition to migrants. However, some promising regional solutions could be applied in a more coordinated regional approach to help ensure that host countries and IOs supporting them can better extend enduring solidarity and inclusion to Venezuelans. These solutions include longer-term visa options, such as the new Colombian 10-year visa, that can help regularize and include Venezuelans over a prolonged period. A particularly recommended approach would be the regional application of an inventive Latin America humanitarian-orientated accord, the Cartagena Declaration, a forward-thinking concept with a potential that has never been realized. The Cartagena Declaration could offer more comprehensive protection and fairer access to rights beyond temporary measures. (shrink)

George Ciccariello-Maher’sWe Created Chávezis the most important book available in English proposing an anti-capitalist framework for understanding the Bolivarian process in contemporary Venezuela, as well as its historical backdrop dating back to 1958. The book contains within it a laudable critique of Eurocentrism and a masterful combination of oral history, ethnography, and theoretical sophistication. It reveals with unusual clarity and insight the multiplicity of popular movements that allowed for Hugo Chávez’s eventual ascension to presidential office in the late 1990s.We Created (...) Chávezhas set a new scholarly bar for social histories of the Bolivarian process and demands serious engagement by Marxists. As a first attempt at such engagement, this paper reveals some critical theoretical and sociological flaws in the text and other areas of analytical imprecision. Divided into theoretical and historical parts, it unpacks some of the strengths and weaknesses by moving from the abstract to the concrete. The intervention begins with concepts – the mutually determining dialectic between Chávez and social movements; ‘the people’; and ‘dual power’. From here, it grounds these concepts, and Ciccariello-Maher’s use of them, in various themes and movements across specific historical periods of Venezuelan political development – the rural guerrillas of the 1960s, the urban guerrillas of the 1970s, the new urban socio-political formations of the 1980s, Afro-Indigenous struggles in the Bolivarian process, and formal and informal working-class transformations since the onset of neoliberalism and its present contestation in the Venezuelan context. (shrink)

This article aims to compare the national legal systems that regulate biomedical research in an industrialized country (United States) and a developing country (Venezuela). A new international order is emerging in which Europe, Japan and the United States (US) are revising common guidelines and harmonizing standards. In this article, we analyze – as an example – the US system. This system is controlled by a federal agency structured to regulate research funded by the federal government uniformly, either in the US (...) or abroad. In contrast, in Venezuela, a developing country, the creation of a centralized system is a slow process. Different types of ethical committees review research projects using non-uniform criteria. Consequently, various parallel organizations that conduct biomedical research, such as universities, research institutes and private hospitals have diverse regulations operating at a local level. Thus, the most relevant difference between the Venezuelan and the US systems is the degree of standardization. In the US, the review process is performed by institutional review boards (IRBs), which have a similar organization and maintain relationships with a centralized agency, following standard regulations. Although new proposals for establishing national regulations are currently being considered in Venezuela, the success of these initiatives will depend on promoting governmental efforts to create a more structured centralized system supported by a national regulatory framework. This system will need governmental financial support at all levels. This article proposes an integrated system to regulate research with human participants in Venezuela and other developing countries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to compare the national legal systems that regulate biomedical research in an industrialized country (United States) and a developing country (Venezuela). A new international order is emerging in which Europe, Japan and the United States (US) are revising common guidelines and harmonizing standards. In this article, we analyze – as an example – the US system. This system is controlled by a federal agency structured to regulate research funded by the federal government uniformly, either in the (...) US or abroad. In contrast, in Venezuela, a developing country, the creation of a centralized system is a slow process. Different types of ethical committees review research projects using non‐uniform criteria. Consequently, various parallel organizations that conduct biomedical research, such as universities, research institutes and private hospitals have diverse regulations operating at a local level. Thus, the most relevant difference between the Venezuelan and the US systems is the degree of standardization. In the US, the review process is performed by institutional review boards (IRBs), which have a similar organization and maintain relationships with a centralized agency, following standard regulations. Although new proposals for establishing national regulations are currently being considered in Venezuela, the success of these initiatives will depend on promoting governmental efforts to create a more structured centralized system supported by a national regulatory framework. This system will need governmental financial support at all levels. This article proposes an integrated system to regulate research with human participants in Venezuela and other developing countries. (shrink)

This study aims to test the theoretical model of career adaptability of refugees to investigate the dynamics of successful resettlement. The theoretical model is grounded on career construction and social network theory. We employ quantitative and qualitative methodologies to test the model in a sample of Venezuelans living and working in Colombia. The quantitative results provide partial support for Campion’s model. However, we test an alternative model and find that career adaptability has a direct relationship with subjective resettlement. In addition, (...) cultural identification plays a buffering role on the harmful effects of discrimination on subjective resettlement. Qualitative results from eight in-depth interviews shed light on the process of refugee resettlement, thus revealing the role of social networks. Our study contributes to previous research on refugees by testing, adapting, and expanding a novel model of work resettlement and focusing on a group of refugees transitioning from one emerging country to another emerging country. (shrink)

(1982). A methodology for achieving the aims and objectives of the Forum Humanum: The approach of the Venezuelan group. World Futures: Vol. 18, Alternatives for Humankind: The Role of Latin America, pp. 145-158.

Los procesos culturales de los pueblos rurales de América Latina en cuanto a su parte inmaterial, están íntimamente relacionados con la memoria colectiva y/o social, la cual puede fungir, entre otras cosas, para afianzar la transmisión de leyendas creadas por la sabiduría popular por medio de la tradición oral. En los llanos centro-occidentales venezolanos a lo largo de más dos siglos se ha diseminado cantidad de leyendas que cuentan la aparición de espíritus que vagan por las sabanas solitarias, sobre todo (...) en las noches de mayor oscuridad; los llamados “espantos de la sabana” son las almas de antiguos pobladores, ya conocidos, que deambulan pidiendo oraciones para su descanso eterno, o por no poder encontrar la paz que procuran. Dichas narraciones, al pasar de generación en generación forman parte de la identidad llanera y son incluidas en la literatura nacional; en el presente artículo se destaca esta característica colocando como ejemplo la novela de Rómulo Gallegos, Cantaclaro , así como coplas populares o aquellas recopiladas por Alberto Arvelo Torrealba para establecer el enlace existente entre la creación y transmisión de las leyendas y la religiosidad de dicha cultura. Palabras clave: Espantos de la sabana. Leyendas populares. Llanos centro-occidentales venezolanos. Religiosidad.Cultural processes of rural populations in Latin America while its immaterial dimension, are closely related to social and collective memory, which can serve, among other thins, to strengthen the transmission of legends created by wisdom through oral tradition. In the plains of the Midwest Venezuelan, during more than two centuries, were heard many legends that tell the apparition of spirits which roam the savannas lonely, especially on the darkest nights. These "ghosts of Savannah" are the souls of old settlers who roam (roam) because they can not find peace or because they are asking for prayers for his eternal rest. These stories from generation to generation are part of the identity of the plains and are included national literature. This article emphasizes this feature, taking as an example the novel by Romulo Gallegos, as well as popular songs or those compiled by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba to establish the link between the creation and transmission of legends and religion of that culture. Keywords: Ghosts of savannah. Popular legends. Western-central Venezuelan plain. Religiosity. (shrink)

This study analyzes the journalistic discourses on social media in order to find out the position of Venezuelan and international press in the coverage of 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. Drawing on Borrat’s and Enguix Oliver’s theoretical approaches regarding newspapers and social networks, and through CDA models of Fairclough and Richardson, this research aims to understand to what extent the national quality newspapers such as El Nacional, El Universal, and Últimas Noticias, and the international ones as The New York (...) Times, The Guardian, El País, and Le Monde participated in the Venezuelan political conflict and constructed the respective political narratives through Instagram. The findings show that both national and international press participated as external narrators in the political conflict and highlight the role of newspapers as political actors and social media as a tool in their hands. (shrink)

In nine essays, each related to a different time frame, author analyzes diverse aspects of Venezuelans' cultural behavior in regard to what the author considers 'taste.' Witty and amusing, often sarcastic and colloquial, book does not lose perspective of the historical context. A curious x-ray of Venezuelan idiosyncrasies"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

The Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx's work results from a failure to understand his mode of expression. Through meticulous readings of key passages in Marx's oeuvre, Silva isolates the central elements of his style: the search for an architectonic unity at the level of the text, his capacity to express himself dialectically at the level of the sentence, and, above all, his great gift for metaphor.

The Venezuelan-Chilean humanist Andrés Bello has been recognized as one of the most distinguished intellectuals of the 19th century—one of the last polymaths of the stature of figures such as Athanasius Kircher, Gottfried Leibniz or Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, his numerous contributions span fields such as grammar, poetry, civil law, diplomacy, education, political theory, philology and philosophy. However, despite having composed one of the most important philosophical treatises ever written in Spanish, his philosophical proposals have not been engaged with a (...) substantial way by scholars of the Anglophone world. Only a few scholars such as... (shrink)

Venezuelan media present corruption as a major problem of the country and a research conducted by the author shows managers perceive it as business ethics' main issue. The corruption type addressed to in this article is the collusion between public officials and private managers for illegal or undue profits. Corruption in this form is related to the long-standing policy of State intervention and overregulation of the economy in order to industrialize the country. The issue analyzed is the perception of (...) corruption as a major political and social problem. Corruption is pervasive in many societies but it is not perceived as a central problem. The explanation for this perception in Venezuela is the increased impoverishment of people as a consequence of present economic crisis (the corrupt person is perceived as taking from my pocket) and the openness and pluralistic character of the political system. Moral indignation and scandal is the result of this new feature of Venezuelan society. Changes in the economic policies and the awareness of corruption seem to establish the basis to overcome the perception of corruption as the paramount problem it is now. (shrink)

In the last decade, Venezuelans have faced a range of challenges such that by 2023, nearly 7.2 million have fled, the vast majority hosted within the region. One country particularly stands out: Colombia has accepted over 2.5 million. Colombia’s behaviour does not appear motivated by legal obligations or universal ethical principles; it is hard to make sense of in terms of international ethical and political theory. Rather, Colombian state and society make reference to mundane, localised concepts of friendship, fraternity and (...) the reciprocity of a shared history. Such everyday ethics is generally ignored in existing debates. I argue that immigration ethics could helpfully begin from concrete, everyday ethical behaviour rather than idealisation and abstraction. Instead of initially asking what states and societies should do regarding immigration, we could ask what do they already do, why and how? This article therefore explores how Colombian politicians and civil society actors understood their welcoming actions through an awareness of entangled histories, reciprocity, friendship and solidarity: everyday, vernacular ways in which responsibility-taking is rationalised and practiced. My argument is not that Colombia’s actions are normatively right, or an enactment of immigration justice. Rather, these actions were ambivalent: the messy, pragmatic result of negotiating different, competing responsibilities, principles and emotions. The results were imperfect, heavily gendered, but also unprecedented. Those advocating greater societal responsibility for immigrants would perhaps do best to look beyond the global north, shun the universal and start from local activities founded in vernacular, everyday ethics. (shrink)

The Navarre-Venezuelan philosopher Juan David García Bacca is one of the most notable and original figures of Spanish-speaking thought, although his work has not yet received the attention it deserves. One of the pillars of his philosophy consists of what he calls a transfinite anthropology that considers man as an entity that strives to enhance his being. This anthropological approach is based on a phenomenology of nature that emphasizes the becoming and the transformations that man effects in the world. (...) In this philosophical context, García Bacca soon became interested in the work of Husserl, Scheler y Heidegger. This article deals with the way in which García Bacca describes and values Husserl’s descriptions of intentional consciousness. The problem that García Bacca poses to transcendental phenomenology concerns neither the reality of pure consciousness nor its objective scope. García Bacca is interested in finding out if there is a potentiation of the being of consciousness superior to or deeper than the self-reflection proper to the transcendental attitude. He discovers this potentiation in the notion of an “agonic consciousness” that resists the representation of its annihilation, and whose philosophical antecedent is found in the work of Miguel de Unamuno. Without sharing all of García Bacca’s interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology, the author of the article considers that it nevertheless raises relevant questions concerning the facticity and necessity proper to the transcendental subject. (shrink)

Between December 14 and 20, 1965, the World Health Organization Scientific Group on Haemoglobinopathies and Allied Disorders metatthe Geneva agency's headquarters. The group comprised eight well-known physicians including Tulio Arends, a leading Latin American human geneticist from the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations. Others came from North America, Northern and Southern Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, an array that reflected the delicate geopolitical equilibriums of postwar international health programs, but also the development of highly specialized biomedical (...) research around the globe. They elected Herman Lehmann, from the Abnormal Haemoglobin Research Unit of the Medical Research... (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the relationship between populism, 21st-century socialism, and the emergence of what has been referred to as an ‘ estado delincuente’, in the case of Venezuela. That is, a state structure permeated with transnational organized crime mafias in the executive and the judiciary, in the financial system, the prosecutor’s office, the police, the armed forces, the prison system, state-owned companies, governorships, and city councils, among other state institutions. First, I review conceptual aspects of populism to understand (...) how this served as the basis for creating the postulates of 21st-century socialism, which promoted the institutional destruction of Venezuelan democracy and created the conditions for the unbridled dissemination of state corruption. Second, emblematic cases of white-collar and blood crimes, nepotism and other corrupt activities are discussed to provide an idea of the magnitude of the issues that permeate the state apparatus. To conclude, I provide a critical summary of the consequences of this way of doing politics in contemporary Venezuela. (shrink)

Anticolonial theorists and revolutionaries have long turned to dialectical thought as a central weapon in their fight against oppressive structures and conditions. This relationship was never easy, however, as anticolonial thinkers have resisted the historical determinism, teleology, Eurocentrism, and singular emphasis that some Marxisms place on class identity at the expense of race, nation, and popular identity. In recent decades, the conflict between dialectics and postcolonial theory has only deepened. In _Decolonizing Dialectics _George Ciccariello-Maher breaks this impasse by bringing the (...) work of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel together with contemporary Venezuelan politics to formulate a dialectics suited to the struggle against the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This is a decolonized dialectics premised on constant struggle in which progress must be fought for and where the struggles of the wretched of the earth themselves provide the only guarantee of historical motion. (shrink)

Libro sumamente valioso. Tras sendas visiones de conjunto, muy logradas, del positivismo en América Latina en general y en Venezuela en particular, siguen capítulos sobre: Adolfo Ernst; Rafael Villavicencio; Vicente Marcano; Lasandro Alvarado; Luis Razetti; Guillermo Delgado Palacios; Luis López Méndez; José Gil Fortoul; Laureano Vallenilla Lanz; César Zumeta y Manuel Arcaya. Tiende a hacer comparaciones con otras manifestaciones del positivismo latinoamericano"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Abstrac. The work argues the activation of the competence of the UN Security Council to review the complex humanitarian emergency situation in Venezuela, and adopt as a provisional measure a Humanitarian Electoral Intervention (IHE), which allows to settle and alleviate conflicts by holding some general elections, based on the experience of Cambodia (1992-1993) and Timor Leste (2001-2002), and thus ruling out any possibility of violence in the Venezuelan conflict, also removing any possibility of military intervention, bearing in mind that (...) the continuity or aggravation they constitute a threat to regional and world peace and security. (shrink)

v. 1. Siglo XVII-XVIII.--v. 2. Siglo XVIII, Suárez y Urbina.--v. 3. Siglo XIX, Andrés Bello.

Following the line of thought articulated by Gallegos-Ordorica (2019), the main goal of this article is to argue that the 19th century Venezuelan-Chilean polymath Andrés Bello should be included within the history of the pragmatist tradition as an important precursor insofar as his masterpiece, Filosofía del Entendimiento (Philosophy of the Understanding), exhibits many views and attitudes that are characteristic of pragmatism. A second and narrower goal of this article is to show that the specific kind of proto-pragmatist position that (...) Bello endorses in Philosophy of the Understanding bears remarkable similarities to the neo-pragmatist view of Huw Price and to argue that Bello’s metaphorical idea-signs can be potentially useful in explaining the great variety of functions that what Price calls “i-representations” have within his functional pluralism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The disparity in the venezuelan demographic transition is a fact known by experts. On this setting, there are four municipalities in Falcón State with a high elder population, one of them is Tocópero. This research had as general objectives to study the estimations of demographic risks and the social politics for elders, people who are 75 and more, from Tocópero Municipality, considering that specialists indicate that, once the demographic oldness has arrived, it is important to study thoroughly the (...) elder population in order to design relevant politics and programs, taking into consideration that it is a vulnerable group. It was an exploratory and descriptive study, with a field-no experimental-transectional design. The sample was intentional. Structured interviews and questionnaires were applied to elders and municipal officials. The data processing was carried out by using quantitative methods. The conclusions indicated that the elder population in Tocópero Municipality had a marked female tendency. In general terms, the adverse effects associated to the estimations of demographic risk were not present in the studied sample. There was no relation between the demographic reality of this municipality and the social politics and programs implemented. The programs concentrated the elder and suppressed the intergenerational contact; the centralism was the key element to understand the present politics of the Venezuelan state towards the oldness. The demographic oldness of this municipality was determined by the way in which the birth of the municipality was approved. (shrink)

Todo Estado de Derecho moderno tiene su fundamento en ciertos principios que rigen la manera en cómo se ejerce el Poder Público, y es el modo en que efectivamente se aplican, lo que ciertamente determinará la naturaleza y característica de dicho Estado. En el caso venezolano, tales principios se encuentran expresamente plasmados en nuestra Carta Magna y son: El principio de competencia administrativa, el principio de legalidad, el principio de separación y colaboración entre los poderes y el principio de responsabilidad (...) del Estado y sus funcionarios. La intención es definir y desarrollar brevemente estos principios, a fin de poder establecer las características del Estado Venezolano, desde el punto de vista Constitucional (positivo) y desde el punto de vista real. Palabras clave: Principios constitucionales; Responsabilidad del Estado; Competencia; Legalidad; Separación de poderes. Constitutional principles concerning the exercise of public power.Every modern law-ruled State has its foundation on certain principles which govern theway Public Power is exercised. It is the manner in which those principles are in fact applied what will actually determine the nature and characteristics of such a State. In Venezuela’s case such principles are explicitly presented in our Constitution. They are: the principle of administrative competence, the principle of legality, the principle of separation and cooperation between powers and the principle of responsibility of the State and its officials. The aim is to define and briefly unfold these principles, so as to establish the characteristics of the Venezuelan State, both from the Constitutional (positive) and reality standpoints. Keywords : Constitutional Principles; State Responsibility; Competence; Legality; Separation of Powers. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the utility for employing case study methodologies to provide sufficient external validity upon which to craft policy relevant to maintaining healthy democratic politics. The broader theoretical context is an investigation into the conditions that might structurally condition democracies to fail via democratic means. Venezuela’s democratic decline serves as the basis for the heuristic case study, wherein the objective is to identify the failures of the Venezuelan case in a larger framework that addresses the complexity of institutional (...) design in democratic political systems states broadly. Cases are selected based upon the objective of the researcher, and similarly, the case study methodology chosen rests firmly on their research goals. Lastly, the chapter outlines the research design necessary for satisfying broader inquiry within the more modest approach to how heuristic case studies can be used to inform both theory and policy. (shrink)

The ad describes a programme, encouraged by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to sell heating oil at discount prices to low-income communities in Boston, the South Bronx and elsewhere in the United States — one of the more ironic gestures ever in the North-South dialogue. The deal developed after a group of US senators sent a letter to nine major oil companies asking them to donate a portion of their recent record profits to help poor residents cover heating bills. The (...) only response came from CITGO. (shrink)

This exercise adopts the categories of analysis of the semiotics of the passions for the reading of La Familia, one of the three short stories of the Venezuelan author Nuni Sarmiento in ¡Señoras! Once the passions are understood as narrative text, we try to formalize the narrative program to descript both the mode of configuration of the passion ‘rage’ and that of its literary representation. As an essay, the approach could enrich the theoretical framework and the possibilities of interpretation (...) and intertextuality of the literary text. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline what I take to be the most important theoretical claims and innovations of ‘twenty-first century socialism’ in Venezuela. These, I argue, consist of an emphasis on human development through popular-economy initiatives, and the importance of building popular power through the state, rather than by ignoring or fighting against it. I then present evidence on Venezuela’s Socialist Production Units, one of Venezuela’s newest state-supported popular-economy organisations. I argue that, consistent with the twenty-first-century socialism approach, SPUs are (...) sites of human development in which participants are learning to challenge capitalist social relations, while establishing new values and practices. Therefore, we can think of Venezuela’s popular economy as expressing a sharpened class contradiction.However, my case study also shows that holding hands with human development is class struggle directed against the state. This reveals a central theoretical and practical paradox in twenty-first century socialism, namely that, while nurturing initiatives that challenge capital, the Venezuelan state also emerges as an important barrier to overcoming the class relation. This, I argue, is not wholly consistent with the views of theorists of twenty-first century socialism that understand Venezuela’s popular economy as forming a new form of dual power or a parallel state, and who therefore downplay the importance of struggles against the state within the popular economy. The strategic implication is that struggles between popular-economy participants and the state cannot be avoided, and indeed will need to be fostered if the project for twenty-first century socialism is to continue. (shrink)

Jose Manuel Delgado Ocando presents us with a brilliant and original analysis of Venezuelan political reality. It is well known that due to the election of President Hugo Chavez Frías, a popular referendum was convened with the express intention of constituting a new constitutional order. This..

Resumen. El presente estudio de caso expone, a partir de la historia de vida como fuente de información, un abordaje de la vida cotidiana más allá de lo meramente narrativo y periodístico. La investigación toma como objeto de estudio los cambios ocurridos en las costumbres y los hábitos de comportamiento cotidiano de una inmigrante española en la colonia agrícola de Turén en Venezuela a mediados del siglo pasado. Se considera que los procesos migratorios, máxime si se enmarcan dentro de un (...) proyecto colonizador, resultan propicios para detectar las variaciones en los mun-dos vitales de las personas, en ese proceso obligado al que se enfrenta el emigrante de ajustarse a las condiciones de un medio ambiente nuevo, extraño y a veces per-cibido como hostil. La información se recoge a través de los recuerdos que tiene la emigrante, suministrados en entrevistas abiertas. Las experiencias de la vida cotidiana en el pueblo español donde vivía la emigrante se comparan con las de la colonia agrícola venezolana a la que fue a vivir, a la luz de aportes teóricos provenien-tes del campo de la antropología. Se concluye que el enfoque etnohistórico de los hechos puede contribuir a explicar el análisis histórico de los mismos, dando una visión alternativa pero complementaria y enriquecedora a las metodologías tradi-cionales para el estudio del pasado. Palabras clave: etnohistoria, vida cotidiana, historia de vida, inmigración, siglo XX, Aragón, Venezuela.. The essay exposes a study of the daily life, trying to overcome the normal, journalis-tic narrative explanations, offering instead an approach based on the history of life-time. The research takes as object of study the expected changes occurred in the personal manners and daily habits of a Spanish immigrant in the agricultural colony of Turen in Venezuela, during the middle of the past century. Migration processes, especially if happen as part of colonization projects, offer a good opportunity to detect relevant changes in the inner lives of people, due to the efforts of the immi-grant to deal with the adaptation to a new, different and sometimes hostile environ-ment. Information is obtained through the remembrances of the immigrant during open interviews. Personal remembrances about her daily life in the small Spanish town where she lived before migration are compared with those other ones in the Venezuelan agricultural colony where she arrived. These comparisons are analysed based on contributions coming from the anthropology field. As a conclusion, etno-history approach is recommended for the study of the past in order to enrich tradi-tional methodologies used by historians, as a complementary approach. Key words: etnohistory, daily life, history of lifetime, immigration, 20th century, Aragon, Venezuela. (shrink)