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Young foot soldiers of the revolution
by Kiraz Janicke
With young people playing a leading role in many spheres of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, a key challenge facing young Venezuelan revolutionaries is how to cohere a mass youth and student movement that can not only challenge the corrupt elites of the autonomous universities (which have become bastions for the far right in Venezuela), but also push forward the revolutionary process as a whole.
President Hugo Chavez initiated the Frente Francisco de Miranda (FFM) in 2003 and it is now the largest youth-based organisation in Venezuela. The FFM originated from a discussion between Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro on youth collaboration between Venezuela and Cuba, with the aim of developing facilitators for Mission Robinson, Venezuela’s mass literacy program. A 50-day-long course on social work was established in Cuba, with those returning forming the FFM. Thirty-six thousand Venezuelan youth have participated in 11 courses in Cuba. Those who return, through the FFM, play a crucial role in helping organise the social missions that have formed the backbone of the revolution.
Taking its name from the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, who fought in the French, American and Haitian Revolutions and for the liberation of South America from Spanish colonialism, the FFM views itself as being the “foot soldiers of the revolution”. The organisation’s political direction comes from Chavez. As Maria Rosa, head of student affairs for the FFM, explained to
Green Left Weekly, the FFM cannot be described as simply a political, social or military organisation, but was formed “based on the necessities of the revolution”.
The FFM sees developing a popular revolutionary ideology as critical. FFM leader in Merida, Carlos Peroza, explained: “In order to defend the revolution, people have to be conscious of the ideas of socialism, of what they are defending.” Through its activity, the FFM aims to “to take scientific socialism to the base”.
The FFM has played a key role in some of the major achievements of the Bolivarian revolution, particularly the extension of literacy to 1.5 million people through Mission Robinson and the issuing of identity cards to thousands of Venezuelans through Mission Identity, which has enabled previously excluded poor people to participate in elections. Rosa explained that during the campaign against the recall referendum in August 2004, the FFM functioned like a political party in mobilising voters in favour of Chavez and the revolutionary process.
The FFM aims to help build popular power by working “to imbue within the community the ideas that the communities themselves are the ones that have the solution to their problems”, Peroza explained. Indicating their role as a “cadre force” to solve the tasks thrown up by the revolution, Rosa added, “recently we have been given responsibilities for housing and for Mercal, [the provision of food at below-market prices]”, two extremely urgent tasks facing the revolution.
FFM members are also active in the army reserves. Chavez has launched a campaign to organise at least 1 million people into the reserves to create a “people’s army” to help defend Venezuela against any military threat from the United States. Peroza stressed: “This is a peaceful revolution, but we understand that we are up against the biggest imperial power in the world.”
While the FFM represents the most successful attempt at building a united revolutionary youth organisation, in November 2004, according to Rosa, the FFM found itself in a “state of ideological and organisational emergency”. Initially, members of the FFM were paid a stipend by the government; however when this was reduced, 21,000 of the original 36,000 participants in the social activism course left the organisation. Many did so for economic reasons, but also because of ideological heterogeneity and disagreements over a lack of internal democracy.
Rosa explains that some FFM members “put forward the position that they didn’t go to Cuba to be political, but rather to do social work”, however, “through a process of discussion we decided that we were a political/social organisation that responded to the line of Comandante Chavez, that responded to the interests of the revolution”.
Recently, some in Venezuela have begun to call for a struggle against the hold that the right-wing elite have over Venezuela’s university system. Rosa explained that while the FFM views this struggle as crucial, it sees it as the role of student organisations, rather than the FFM: “The FFM provides a space for youth who are community leaders, but are not associated with any student organisation.”
The FFM does not see its struggle in Venezuela as separate from other struggles around the world. As one member commented, “Young people all over the world are the ones that will have to tackle the problems that the world is facing, that will have to take the struggle forward. The fight for social justice has to go beyond the borders of Venezuela.”
From Green Left Weekly, November 16, 2005.
