I know I am not alone when I express my extreme sadness over
the death of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. I have been reading about his
illness for a while and was hopeful that he could pull through.
I know that the revolution is never one person – it is the
people. So I know that, unless outside influences try to destroy it, the Bolivarian revolution
he started will continue.
I had the honor to hear President Chavez speak when I went
to Caracas. I was there to speak at the 2006 World Social Forum. This is
actually where the concept of Food Empowerment
Project first came to me.
Chavez spoke with great passion about what was happening to Mother
Earth and urged us to protect her. He talked about how humans treated her and
her creatures with such disregard and how we must act.
I sat in awe of a president of a country who would take time
to meet and speak with a group of activists – not donors, not even potential
voters – about our shared dreams and hopes for a better world.
I was lucky to see some of the changes he was beginning to
institute. I was able to tour an area that was once an oil refinery and see
what they had turned it into: one cooperative that made t-shirts and another
that made shoes, a free clinic (equipped with a dentist office and other health
services), and an organic garden.
The organic garden was maintained by senior citizens. The food was grown to feed the workers and anything left over was sold to a local market. This is similar to what Food Empowerment Project would love to see – people growing their own food and feeding their own community.
The organic garden was maintained by senior citizens. The food was grown to feed the workers and anything left over was sold to a local market. This is similar to what Food Empowerment Project would love to see – people growing their own food and feeding their own community.
We were able to look down at the ramshackle homes and see
the small green roof tops that indicated where Cuban doctors lived, who work
for free under the oil-for-doctors program. The doctors live upstairs and their
clinics are downstairs. We saw many green roofs because they wanted to make
sure there were enough doctors for each neighborhood.
In another area of Caracas, space was created for a garden
at the crossroads between two highways. Maybe not the most ideal situation from
a toxic perspective, but you can see the creative ideas being generated. The
area was previously full of trash and it took about 14 truckloads to remove the
garbage.
The government transformed that space into a garden
maintained by homeless people.
I know that no leader is perfect, so I write this to share what I saw and heard.
I know that no leader is perfect, so I write this to share what I saw and heard.
Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, uses food as
a tool for positive change – to empower the people.
And yet, I can’t help but feel many times in the US that food is treated like a weapon. From Monsanto to Coca-cola to the lack of access to healthy foods in communities of color and low-income communities, food is a battleground and a marker of privilege rather than a right.
And yet, I can’t help but feel many times in the US that food is treated like a weapon. From Monsanto to Coca-cola to the lack of access to healthy foods in communities of color and low-income communities, food is a battleground and a marker of privilege rather than a right.
Instead of handing out ideas, tools, and land to make our
communities healthy, we seem to prioritize corporate claims to own our water,
our seeds.
When we act here against those who seek to put profit over
people, greed over healthy communities, we must never forget we are acting in
solidarity with people around the globe who also want a better life. We’re
bound together in this struggle and desperately need creative models to feed
ourselves, empower the people, and end the exploitation of the most vulnerable.
Photo of organic garden in Caracas, Venezuela 2006.
President Chavez has been so demonized for so many years by this government that it is refreshing to see a few outlets actually showing the positive things he did for his people. RT's Breaking the Set also busted the myth of Hugo Chavez the dictator by showing how his policies dramatically reduced poverty and income inequality. Thank you for this blog.
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