“We’re tired…”
Wow, talking about a field trip just get a form, to elect the spokesperson for my youth team (that corresponds to my branch of the PSUV).
I had to go to the ‘sala situacional’ – kinda like a logistics centre, which has lists of all the branches, spokespeople, circumscriptions (group of 10 branches) etc. That was a bus trip away and I couldn’t work out which bus to get. Finally I got there, and normally what most people would have to do is go there with the spokesperson from their branch, sign, and they get their form with spaces for all the people who were present at the election and guidelines about holding the elections. However, my spokesperson was sick, and as it turned out I knew the guy working there, and someone else had already collected the forms for my circumscription.
Fine, so I rang them, ‘x has them now’, I ring x, ‘y has them now’ etc. (there are arguments for and against such bureaucracy- against being that it makes it real hard for people to actually elect their spokesperson, especially people from the outskirts of Merida, but for being that it also makes it hard for people to just fake a list and get themselves nominated artificially).
It didn’t matter in the end because we didn’t get the 10 people we needed. Of all the people I rang, just 1 person came, then there was the other guy, C, who’d also rung some people, and a mate of the spokesperson- who was previously in branch 3, but has been excluded from that branch (like not told when meetings are etc) because he has declared he wont vote for the PSUV candidate (the one most people are against, but who most people have decided they have to vote for because to not do so is to let the opposition win).
So the 4 of us and the spokesperson met in the house of the dude who’s been excluded- sitting on his bed and leaning against the stove- and we nutted out a better plan to build the first meeting of the youth of our branch. We’re going to show a film, have discussion, have traditional Venezuelan food, and build it going house to house, because its hard to motivate stuff in a short phone conversation. We’re going to start doing that tonight, which should be interesting, I’ve never done anything like it.
Saturday at 3 was the circumscription meeting - where all (8) representatives from the 10 branches meet. Ours is in INMECA, the government printing company, which has a big meeting room in it, and a garden behind full of banana, orange, and pomegranate trees.About 30 people turned up (out of 80), and the delegate raced through various issues- the youth teams, 13 September ‘one day of wage’ day- to raise money for the PSUV election campaign, and then ages was spent on division of labour, switching people around the various commissions (of things like propaganda, security, electoral, logistics, mobilisation etc) and organising the voting patrols.(The patrols are the Chavistas’ ingenious vote-winning strategy, where each person commits to get 12 other people to vote).
At the end, time is allotted to ‘discussion’- mostly people got up and talked about the need for unity, (given all the divisions there are right now in the party- something that is normal, but also a barrier) and a new image for Carlos Leon, and a guy from my branch said that propaganda is needed to explain the 26 laws.
Honestly, I felt frustrated. I realise the importance of the upcoming elections- we really can’t let the opposition win, they’ll only use it to destabilise the revolution- but I also think the PSUV has got to be about more than that, it can’t fall into just electoralism. But when the level of consciousness is so low, voting seems to be the easiest thing.
Still, I think raising consciousness is one of the main roles of the branches, (that and information dispersing etc), as there is little practical to be done in a branch that covers just 6 by 4 blocks (and the practical stuff is done more at the workplace level, in the community councils and in the missions).
Saturday night there was the PSUV Youth concert, with a stage closing up Avenue 4, and a small crowd of about 100 young people. It was an awesome concert though, I’m starting to really get into Venezuelan music. In between songs one of the youth promoters would plug people enrolling to vote and participating in the new youth teams. At 9.30 it started to rain but some of the hard core people kept dancing, and me and a friend went to the pub, where among other things she talked about how demotivated she was feeling, “I’ve been supporting Chavez since he came to power….but these days I just want to finish my studies and get ajob…”. She feels like this because of all the ‘hacks’ or reformists/bureaucrats that we have to deal with in everything.
On Monday I ducked out to have lunch and go with my friend to check out a place, as he’s struggling to find a place to live. He’s involved in an alternative media collective- which had 12 people in it, but only 3 people are doing all of the work. He’s also feeling like a bit of a holiday J
Gosh its been a bit of a gloomy blog entry…but to be honest, that’s kind of the mood right now.