Venezuela Reacts to Colombia Hostage Rescue

Yesterday’s rescue of 15 hostages in Colombia was celebrated widely.

U.S. citizens Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, and Thomas Howes returned safely to Texas, and Ingrid Betancourt was reunited with her children. Watch BBC footage of the happy return here.

The Venezuelan government expressed satisfaction with the liberation, according to Bloomberg. Here are some excerpts of a statement released in Spanish by the Ministry of Foreign Relations on its website:

“The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, has undertaken intensive efforts in favor of a humanitarian accord in Colombia. His mediation brought the first liberations of Colombian citizens held hostage by the FARC. …Hence we appreciate and share in the happiness brought by the liberation and reunion in all its magnitude.

Our government reiterates its public appeal to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to liberate the captives it still holds. We hope as well that this will open a path to a humanitarian accord, the dismantling of the war, and the achievement of peace.”

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Venezuela’s Youth Music Program Spreads Smiles

By now, you’ve surely heard of Venezuela’s renowned music program “El Sistema,” which gives young children from poor families an opportunity to learn how to play classical music. The program is 30 years old, and currently reaches quarter of a million students. It is also having a big impact around the world.

Here is a roundup of articles you may have missed:

The Associated Press writes that Venezuela’s youth orchestra program has turned the country into “a powerhouse for producing talented musicians.” The prime example is conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who will head the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009. “‘El Sistema’ has given me everything. It gave me the possibility of having a path in life with music,” he said.

Reuters notes that rich countries like the U.S. and and UK are “lining up” to imitate the Venezuelan program. Hundreds of thousands of children in Venezuela have sidestepped a life of poverty and crime through the free education, so why not try it elsewhere? L.A. and Baltimore are developing similar youth orchestras.

Wired Magazine opines that, regardless of what people think about President Chavez, nothing can touch the shining example of his state-funded music education program. The heavy investments in poverty relief and human development indeed show that Venezuela has its priorities straight.

The New York Times reports that Venezuela is testing the peaceful techniques of “El Sistema” in prisons across the country. Here, “budding musicians include murderers, kidnappers, thieves and… dozens of “narcomulas,” or drug mules, as small-scale drug smugglers are called.” If the attempt to humanize jails works out, prison reform in Venezuela may also set the standard for other nations.

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Venezuela: Putting Money Where the Mouths Are

Venezuela is upping investments in agriculture in response to concerns about food supplies that are part of a rising global crisis.

Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua announced plans on Tuesday for a 20% increase in the production of food crops including cereals, rice, corn, and sorghum. The transformation is dramatic in the area of soy farming: while Venezuela produced barely any soy in the past, today it is planting nearly 100,000 acres.

Subsidies in all areas of agriculture are set to rise. This policy was announced Wednesday, and is expected to give farmers a boost. The state has also recently purchased dairy farms in order to ensure that local and affordable supplies are available to communities. Want to see for yourself? Check out this “reality tour” by Global Exchange.

You may already know that food security is at the top of the regional agenda these days. When leaders met last month, Venezuela began a $100 million fund to offset shortages in the poorest countries.

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Venezuela’s Cinema City Marks Two Year Anniversary

Yesterday, Venezuela’s Cinema City (in Spanish, Villa del Cine) celebrated its second anniversary! If you haven’t already heard, the Cinema City was founded by the government to promote film making as an integral part of national culture. It has stimulated an enormous amount of activity in Venezuela’s movie business, and has created opportunities for many independent writers, directors and artists.

The BBC has called it “a state-of-the-art production house that is changing the face of Venezuelan cinema.”

Cinema City’s second anniversary was celebrated at the facility in Guarenas with a special pre-screening of 1, 2 y 3 Mujeres. The film offers dramatic accounts of the lives of three Venezuelan women who come from very different backgrounds and face distinct challenges. 1, 2 y 3 Mujeres is the collaborative project of directors Andrea Herrera, Anabel Rodríguez y Andrea Ríos. It is one of 18 films to emerge from Cinema City in the last year. Watch the trailer here.

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Venezuela: Experimenting With Higher Education

A conference on “Trends in Contemporary Urban Music in Latin America” begins today in Caracas, and will take place all month. The future of pop, rock, hip hop, and electronic music will be debated by experts, students, and performers. It is hosted by the National Experimental University for the Arts, which is part of a system of state-sponsored institutions of higher education.

The “National Experimental Universities” were founded last year to increase access to university-level education in Venezuela. The schools are affordable — and thus accessible — to all. A dozen of them have been established throughout the country. Each one exercises organizational autonomy, and offers programs tailored to social and economic issues relevant in the regions where they are located.

Click here for links to these and other major universites in Venezuela.

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Venezuela Launches Online Library of Latin Literature

Thanks to Venezuela’s Ministry of Culture, many classic works of Latin American literature are now available online for free.

To check it out, visit Biblioteca Ayacucho. You can download PDFs files of books in Spanish ranging in publication date from the early 17th century to the late 20th century. Many famous Venezuelan writers are included in this digital “book shelf”: essayists Simón Bolívar, Andrés Bello, Francisco de Miranda, and Rufino Blanco Fombona; poets Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre, and Gustavo Pereira.

Another writer represented in the online collection is the Cuban visionary, José Martí. His essay, “Our America” is a critique of the U.S. written during his exile in New York in the late 1800s. Don’t judge them by their covers, for these are crucial books: some were banned in their day, and others were the basis for key political ideologies (e.g. pan-Americanism, indigenism, or socialism).

Once again, Venezuela is leading the way in democratizing access to culture!

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Venezuela’s Social Missions, Five Years Later

Five years have passed since Venezuela began its “social missions,” state-funded social programs across diverse areas of human development such as education, medicine, nutrition, and culture.

They began in 2003, when the government sought to revolutionize the country’s old social service institutions and reach out to communities all over the country in an aggressive program to redistribute wealth. For too long, citizens had failed to benefit from oil profits.

Venezuela’s social missions are still new, but research on their impact indicates that they contributed to a 9.9% decrease in the poverty rate since 2003.

The stories of people whose lives have been improved by the missions are the best testament to their success. A low-income woman who received a university scholarship from “Mision Sucre,” said: “for so many years I was an excluded person, from education and so on, and four years later I’m a licensed teacher… [this] has caused a change, not just for me but for my family as well. We won’t be passive people, but protagonists in this process.”

Today, Venezuela has 25 “social missions,” some of which have even expanded abroad, such as “Mision Miracle,” which gives free eye surgeries to correct blindness due to cataracts. One of the newest is “Mision Jose Gregorio Hernandez,” which provides disabled people with medical attention and free equipment such as wheelchairs, prostheses, and special beds. To read more about all of the different missions and see statistics on their impact, click here.

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Venezuelan Music Program ‘El Sistema’ on 60 Minutes

A youth music education program in Venezuela known as “El Sistema” (“the system”) was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes yesterday. The program has taught hundreds of thousands of youngsters — starting at 2 years of age! — in poor areas of Venezuela to play classical music.

Watch the 60 Minutes broadcast.

The government-funded “Sistema” was started in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu. It has produced stars such as the maverick 27 year-old conductor Gustavo Dudamel (known to 60 Minutes viewers as “Gustavo the Great”). Dudamel made his mark conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, and has been chosen to head the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra beginning in 2009.

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Venezuela’s New Indigenous Library

Venezuela’s Indigenous population makes up just 1-2% of the national population. In recent years, though, the government has made some noteworthy efforts to reach out to this historically marginal group.

A while ago, we wrote about a new initiative to promote Indigenous community radio. More recently, the state of Amazonas has revealed plans to create a public library focusing on Indigenous language and culture that will be designed in coordination with native leaders.

The governor of Amazonas, Liborio Guarulla (pictured at right), belongs to the Banvia indigenous community. The Banvia are one of 15 different ethnic groups that call Amazonas home, and all of them have distinct linguistic and historical traditions. The library will be located in Puerto Ayacucho, the capital of Amazonas.

Want to know more? Check out this article on the Guaicaipuro Mission initiated by the government in 2003 to restore the rights of Indigenous people in Venezuela.

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