Leftwing activists flock to Venezuela to soak up the socialist 'revolution'
Like Havana, Cuba, and Chiapas, Mexico, before it, Caracas draws liberals from around the world who want to experience Hugo Chavez's experiment in socialism.
from the March 25, 2008 edition
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Other high-profile people have made brief appearances here, too, including actors Danny Glover and Sean Penn. But most are people like Jordan Winquist, who was working as a waiter in Philadelphia after college. One day searching Craigslist he found a job teaching English in Caracas. But politics was the real reason he journeyed here in 2006.
"I wanted to see it for myself," he says, now back in Philadelphia. He also volunteered at one of Chávez's "misiones," to teach carpentry, plumbing, and electricity, mostly to women. "It was really inspirational, really intense."
Even private groups are tapping into the fervor, offering a version of "revolutionary tourism." Organizations like San Francisco-based Global Exchange, a human rights group that runs reality tours around the world, began booking packages in Venezuela a few years ago. Instead of beaches and bars, these tourists visit slums, workshops, and protest centers.
Venezuela differs from other stops on the activists' tour. Its revolution has been largely peaceful, absent the armed conflicts that marked other class-oriented upheavals. That brings challenges, analysts say: The movement didn't grow out of a well-defined ideology. Venezuela is also a major oil producer, which can yield a strange mix of capitalism and socialism.
When Ms. Duckworth arrived two years ago, she found the amount of wealth jarring – especially after a decade in Cuba. "You walk down the street," she says, "and you don't feel very revolutionary." Instead you see fast-food chains, foreign banks, and ads for plastic surgery.
But you can certainly feel it at San Carlos, the old political prison on a hill overlooking the presidential palace. It is now a museum. Poster-size photos of Chavez, Castro, and others hang outside. Inside, the walls are papered with condemnations of US involvement in Iraq and propaganda from the Anti-Imperialist Foundation Manuel Ponte Rodríguez.
Dario Azzellini, a documentary filmmaker from Italy, is teaching a seminar on community councils. Over the years, he has ventured to all the Latin American countries in the midst of social change. He came to Caracas in 2003. "I always go where I can give the most to the social processes of transformation," he says.
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