[News] The Politics of Food in Venezuela
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jun 5 15:21:13 EDT 2018
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13855
The Politics of Food in Venezuela
By Ana Felicien, Christina Schiavoni and Liccia Romero - June 5, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Few countries and political processes have been subject to such
scrutiny, yet so generally misunderstood, as Venezuela and the
Bolivarian Revolution.^1
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-1> This
is particularly true today, as the international media paints an image
of absolute devastation in the country, wrought by failed policies and
government mismanagement. At the same time, the three national elections
of 2017 demonstrated a strong show of support for the continuation of
the revolution under its current leadership. This seeming paradox, we
are told, can only be attributed to government tendencies of co-optation
and clientelism, along with a closing of democratic space. Such messages
are reproduced many times over, both in the media and in certain
intellectual circles.^2
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-2>
A benefit of the intense attention paid to Venezuela is that a recurring
narrative can be identified, which goes basically as follows. The
central character is Hugo Chávez Frías, a strong-armed political leader
who enjoyed the double advantage of personal charisma and high oil
prices over the course of his presidency from 1999 through 2012. In
2013, Chávez died, and the following year global oil prices plunged.
Amid the perfect storm of the loss of Chávez, the collapse in oil
prices, and the government’s misguided policies, Venezuela has steadily
slid into a state of economic and political disintegration, with food
and other necessities growing scarce, in turn sparking social unrest as
people take to the streets. The government, headed by Chávez’s less
charismatic successor, Nicolás Maduro, is going to desperate lengths to
hang onto power, becoming increasingly authoritarian in the process,
while maintaining the populist rhetoric of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution.
However, this dominant narrative does not capture the complexities of
what is happening in Venezuela today. There are significant holes in the
account, which raise important questions: who are “the people” at the
center of this analysis? What, if any, are the different impacts of
present challenges on various sectors of society? How should the
Venezuelan state be understood, and where and how does the role of
capital figure? By focusing on the politics of food as a key area in
which the country’s broader politics are playing out—particularly by
looking at recent shortages and food lines, as well as what have been
presented as “food riots”—a multitude of issues can be better
understood. Often-ignored matters of race, class, gender, and geography
demand special attention.
We will begin by looking to the past to situate present trends in their
proper context. By homing in on the dynamics around Venezuela’s most
highly consumed staple foods, we can gain insight into the current
conjuncture, particularly the recent food shortages. Some of the main
drivers of the shortages come from forces opposing the Bolivarian
Revolution, which are increasingly gaining ground within the state. We
will then discuss responses to the shortages by the government and
popular forces.
Historical Continuities of Extraction
A nuanced understanding of contemporary Venezuela requires going back
not to Chávez’s election in 1999, but centuries earlier, to the period
of colonization and the inception of interrelated patterns of extraction
and social differentiation that continue today. While much has been
written on “extractivism” as a key feature of Latin America’s “pink
tide” countries, including Venezuela, it is imperative to understand
present patterns of extraction as part of a much longer historical
continuity dating back to Spanish colonization from the sixteenth into
the nineteenth centuries. During this period, a “tropical plantation
economy based on slave labor” gave rise to a powerful agroexportation
complex, through which cacao and later coffee were supplied to Europe
and Mexico.^3
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-3> A
key feature of this complex was the two-part plantation-/conuco/ system,
in which the enslaved and, later, low-wage labor forces of the colonial
/haciendas/ depended on family and communal plots (/conucos/) for
subsistence.
Venezuela was among the first countries in the region to achieve
independence, but in the early nineteenth century, most social and
economic structures established under colonization were little altered.
These included patterns of food consumption, extending from the
plantation-/conuco/ system to the culinary habits that the colonial
elite brought over from Europe. This dietary differentiation was
intricately linked with issues of identity and domination, serving to
maintain European descendants’ sense of superiority over the indigenous,
Afro-descendent, and /mestizo/ majority. One Spanish general remarked
that he could “handle anything on this earth except for those wretched
corn cakes they call /arepas/, that have only been made for stomachs of
blacks and ostriches.”^4
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-4> But
even as they disdained indigenous foodways, European elites depended on
them, as indigenous knowledge proved essential for the adaptation of
European crops to tropical agroecosystems, and food from
/conucos/ served as a vital source of sustenance, particularly during
war. The plantation economy and the hacienda system lasted for another
century after independence.
In 1929, the U.S. stock market crash and the associated collapse in
agricultural commodity prices, together with the rise of oil in
Venezuela as an export commodity, spelled the end of the agroexportation
period, as several new patterns rapidly emerged. One was a flight of
capital from agriculture to the emerging petroleum industry, with oil
concessions going mostly to the same wealthy families that had dominated
the agroexport complex.^5
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-5> This
was accompanied by mass migration out of rural areas, through mutually
reinforcing processes of proletarianization and urbanization, and a
subsequent surge in urban poverty, with insufficient employment and
infrastructure to absorb these new urban workers. The development of the
petroleum sector thus further concentrated wealth among the elite while
fostering a “surplus population” of urban poor, but also gave rise to a
middle class of professional workers. In response to these changes,
owners of the former agroexport complex were able to take advantage of
its existing infrastructure, an influx of oil dollars, and the new
purchasing power of Venezuela’s emerging middle class to shift from
exporting to importing food. Over time, these practices developed into a
powerful agro-food import and distribution complex.^6
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-6>
Petroleum also broke the plantation-/conuco/ system, rupturing existing
patterns of production and consumption. To fill this void, the
government in 1936 initiated an agricultural modernization program,
funded by petroleum dollars and designed to replace imports of highly
consumed foods in the growing urban centers. The push for modernization
was part and parcel of the Green Revolution then sweeping much of the
global South, part of an anticommunist Cold War strategy among the
United States and allies. In Venezuela, the process was ushered in by
U.S. “missionary capitalist” to Latin America and godfather to the Green
Revolution, Nelson Rockefeller. As the home of Standard Oil’s most
profitable regional affiliate, the country held a special significance
for Rockefeller, who made Venezuela his home away from home, even
establishing his own /hacienda/.^7
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-7>
Venezuela’s agricultural modernization program melded industrial
production and white supremacy, manifested in efforts aimed at
/blanqueamiento/, or “whitening.” This was reflected, for instance, in
the Law of Immigration and Colonization of 1936, which facilitated the
entrance of white Europeans into Venezuela, intended, in the words of
agricultural minister Alberto Adriani, to help Venezuela “diversify its
agriculture; develop new industries and perfect existing ones; and
contribute to the improvement of its race and the elevation of its
culture.”^8
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-8> Towards
these ends, the law supported the formation of aptly named /colonias
agrícolas/ (agricultural colonies) of European immigrants on some of the
country’s most productive agricultural land, several of which still
exist today.
The modernization agenda also introduced another kind of colonization in
the form of Venezuela’s first chain of supermarkets, CADA, founded in
1948 and spearheaded by Rockefeller, together with the Venezuelan
government. Further solidifying the connections between food
consumption, identity, and social status, supermarkets allowed the
emerging middle class to enjoy a taste of food elitism, literally and
figuratively. This was part of a broader program of modern
state-building designed to turn Venezuela into a “reliable US ally
with…a solid middle-class electorate.”^9
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-9> By
many accounts, these efforts succeeded, and Venezuela by the late
twentieth century was commonly regarded as “one of the developing
world’s success stories, an oil-rich democracy that was seen as a model
for economic growth and political stability in the region.”^10
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-10> However,
“oil never fully transformed Venezuela, but rather it created the
illusion of modernity in a country where high levels of inequality
persisted.”^11
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-11> Indeed,
the predominant narratives routinely fail to mention that at the start
of the Bolivarian Revolution, more than half of the population was
living in poverty, with hunger levels higher than those of today.^12
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-12>
Another Side of History
A glance at recent history challenges the depiction of pre-Chávez
Venezuela as a model democracy and bastion of stability in a tumultuous
region. One particularly revealing episode occurred in 1989, when
IMF-prescribed structural adjustment policies proved the final straw for
an increasingly fed-up population, sparking the Caracazo, or “explosion
of Caracas,” in which hundreds of thousands of people from the hillside
barrios flooded the center of the capital in a massive popular uprising
that rapidly spread across the country.^13
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-13> The
military was ordered to open fire on civilians, yielding a death toll
officially in the hundreds but believed to be in the thousands—yet the
social revolt unleashed by the Caracazo would not be contained.
This brings us to another side of history: every event described above
occurred amid tension, and sometimes open conflict, between the elite
and the “others” whom they attempted to subjugate and exploit, while
never fully succeeding. As recognized by numerous historical accounts,
the indigenous peoples, African descendants, and /mestizos/ who make up
the majority of Venezuelans have long been a defiant lot, from
Afro-descendent rebellions and indigenous uprisings to more covert forms
of resistance. Such resistance from below was pivotal to the fall of
colonization, once independence leader Simon Bolivar understood the
importance of enslaved and indigenous peoples to the struggle for
independence, and continued into peasant struggles over land
post-independence, and later through the struggles of /guerillas/,
students, workers, and women, among other “others,” during the period of
democratization. The rise of Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution can be
understood as a direct continuation of the Caracazo and the rebellions
before it, through which “the popular sectors…came to assume their own
political representation.”^14
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-14>
Inequities around food were among the immediate causes of the Caracazo,
as the poor endured long lines to access basic goods, while middle-class
merchants hoarded these goods to speculate on rising prices in the face
of inflation, and the elite carried on with their day-to-day food habits
largely unaffected—all striking parallels with the present situation.
Just before and after the Caracazo, headlines such as “Prices of Sugar,
Cereals, and Oils Go Up” and “Distressed Multitudes in Search of Food”
abounded in the national press, while the /New York Times/ reported
“shortages of items like coffee, salt, flour, cooking oil and other
basic products.”^15
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-15> This
reflected growing tensions around food access, disproportionately
impacting the poor and showing that Venezuela’s “modernized” food
system, based on importation, industrial agriculture, and supermarkets,
as championed by Rockefeller, did not in fact serve the interests of the
majority. This in turn implied the dual, if at times divergent, tasks at
the start of the Bolivarian Revolution: addressing the immediate
material needs of the more than half of the population living in
poverty, while working to shift the historical patterns that had caused
deep disparities in Venezuela’s food system.
The importance of food and agriculture was reflected in Venezuela’s new
national constitution, drafted through a participatory constituent
assembly process and passed by popular referendum in 1999. The
constitution guarantees food security for all citizens, “through the
promotion of sustainable agriculture as a strategic basis for integrated
rural development.”^16
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-16> In
response to this popular mandate, a variety of state-sponsored
initiatives have been established, in tandem with citizen efforts, under
the banner of “food sovereignty.” Fundamental to these have been
processes of agrarian reform, which have combined land redistribution
with a wide variety of rural development programs, including in
education, housing, health care, and media and communications. Fishing
communities have benefited from similar programs, and from the banning
of industrial trawling off the Venezuelan coast.^17
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-17>These
rural initiatives have been complemented by a range of largely urban
food access programs, reaching schools, workplaces, and households.^18
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-18> Equally
important to food sovereignty efforts are diverse forms of popular
organization, from local communal councils and regional /comunas/ to
farmers’ and fishers’ councils, that have helped to broaden popular
participation in the food system.^19
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-19>
Such programs have seen both important gains and limitations. Perhaps
most notably, Venezuela surpassed the first Millennium Development Goal
of cutting hunger in half by 2015, as recognized by the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization.^20
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-20> From
2008 to 2011, hunger was dramatically reduced, affecting an average of
3.1 percent of the population.^21
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-21> Yet
such advances, sponsored by oil revenues from Venezuela’s nationalized
petroleum industry, came largely from a reinforcement of the agroimport
complex, not from alternative systems. In addition, efforts toward
agrarian reform in the countryside also received significant investment,
but remained largely separate from food security programs. While some
important inroads were made in connecting the two initiatives, the
Chávez years saw no lasting rupture in the historic power of those who
controlled the agrifood system. Thus, more food programs for the poor
meant more food imports, which further consolidated the import complex,
reinforced through multiple mechanisms of the state. Among these
mechanisms was the granting of dollars from oil revenues to private
enterprises, at highly subsidized rates, for imports of food and other
goods deemed essential. This means that over the course of the
Bolivarian Revolution, state funds, while going toward many social
programs, have also flowed into the private food import complex,
amounting to major subsidies for the most powerful companies.^22
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-22> The
direct and indirect beneficiaries of this system have little incentive
to alter it.
Power in the Food System: The /Maíz-Harina-Arepa/ Complex
These processes of accumulation and differentiation in Venezuela’s
agrifood system can be clearly seen in the case of the country’s most
widely consumed food, the /arepa/, a corn patty made from precooked corn
flour. By focusing on what we call the
/maíz-harina-arepa/ (corn-flour-arepa) complex, we can trace the history
of food politics in Venezuela.
The complex dates back to precolonial times, when corn, inextricably
linked with the /conuco/, figured prominently in indigenous traditions,
from cosmologies to foodways. With the colonial invasion, the Spanish
grain of preference, wheat, together with corn and cassava, another
Indigenous staple, helped sustain the Triangle Trade of the colonization
project.^23
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-23>
Patterns of production, processing, and consumption of corn remained
largely unaltered for many years after independence. This changed in the
1960s with the introduction of precooked corn flour, which drove
profound changes across the agrifood system. On the production end, corn
cultivation moved from the /conuco/ into industrial monoculture
production, dependent on certified commercial seed varieties. No less
dramatic were changes in the processing of corn for precooked corn
flour, in which the kernel is “dehulled, degermed, precooked, dried,
flaked, and milled.”^24
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-24> In
the process, its more nutritious outer layers are removed, yielding a
nutritionally poor substance lacking in vitamins and minerals that then
requires fortification to meet basic dietary standards. Inevitably, most
precooked corn flour was used for arepas, dramatically reducing their
preparation time. The food quickly became the principal staple of
Venezuela’s poor working class, and within four decades, pre-cooked corn
flour came to represent 88 percent of all corn consumed in the
country.^25
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-25>
Ever since the first commercialization of precooked corn flour, one
brand, Harina PAN, has become synonymous with the product—to the point
that its name is used interchangeably with the generic term /harina
precocida/. PAN stands for Productos Alimenticios Nacionales, National
Food Products, and is a homonym of /pan/, bread. Despite the humble
origins portrayed in the company’s marketing campaigns, its owners, the
Mendoza Fleury family, come from a long lineage traceable back to the
colonial elite, and have held key posts in both government and business
for generations.^26
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-26> Today
they are among the most powerful families in the country and best known
as the owners of Empresas Polar, the conglomerate that supplies the most
widely consumed foods and beverages in Venezuela, particularly arepas
and beer. Polar, a Venezuelan subsidiary of PepsiCo, is the largest
private company in the country, with products reaching global markets,
and it controls an estimated 50 to 60 percent of Venezuela’s supply of
precooked corn flour.^27
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-27> Such
a degree of control is only possible through a combination of vertical
integration and concentration, strategic links with the state, and
well-crafted marketing in both public and private spaces, including the
most intimate spaces of everyday life. On the production side, Polar’s
Fundación Danac, with more than 600 proprietary corn varieties, has come
to control much of the genetic base of Venezuela’s certified corn seeds,
influencing research and seed certification.^28
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-28> On
the distribution end, Polar is a key shareholder in the Cada supermarket
chain, and in 1992 partnered with the Dutch firm SHV to launch
Venezuela’s largest hypermarket chain, Makro.
Polar’s involvement in the retail sector has secured important
distribution channels, but its primary aim was to secure the market.
Among its earliest marketing strategies was to target Venezuelan
housewives, including training thousands of women to go into their
neighborhoods and teach other women how to make arepas from Harina PAN.
From there, Polar has employed a wide range of tactics reaching
multiple segments of society, from billboards, television, and print
media, to sponsorship of key cultural events, to research and publishing
(through its Fundación Polar), to a prestigious award for scientists
(the Premio Polar) to forms of “corporate social responsibility” that
have garnered international attention.^29
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-29>Through
these and other means, Polar has positioned Harina PAN as “the brand of
birth of all Venezuelans.”^30
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-30> Given
the product’s ubiquity in Venezuelan households, this claim is less
outlandish than it sounds. Perhaps most telling of the sheer extent of
Polar’s penetration into the everyday life of Venezuelans is the common
equation of its products, most of all Harina PAN, with food itself—the
idea that without Polar, there is no food. This phenomenon has not been
lost on the company, which retains the ability to keep its products off
the shelves just as readily as its ability to keep them on—a point to
which we will return.
Since its emergence in 1999, the Bolivarian Revolution has had a complex
and often tense relationship with Polar, even while forging alternatives
within the /maíz-harina-arepa/ complex, particularly through
partnerships between state institutions and farming communities. These
projects center on nationwide planning and coordination of corn
production, coupled with public financing, and primarily involve
cooperatives on former /latifundio/ lands recovered through the agrarian
reform process. Efforts at reform have also been made in the processing
of corn products, though these have yet to reach a significant scale of
production.
Polar thus maintains relative hegemony over corn flour production, and
beyond its physical control, the company wields enormous cultural and
symbolic power as the brand of preference of most Venezuelans. But if
relations between Polar and the government have been fraught over the
course of the Bolivarian Revolution, they have nevertheless not been
entirely oppositional, and deep ties still bind the two across the
/maíz-harina-arepa/ complex. This includes the previously mentioned
provision of money for food importation at highly subsidized rates, of
which Polar is among the top recipients.^31
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-31> Today
such linkages are being further solidified.Food Lines and Fault Lines
As we have seen, the Venezuelan food system has long been shaped by the
pushes and pulls of capital, society, and the state, in a delicate
balance of forces characterized by both deep tensions and deep ties,
with repercussions felt throughout everyday life. The fragility of this
balance has come to the fore in recent years, particularly since 2013,
with the persistence of long food lines that are by now emblematic of
present-day Venezuela, images of which are endlessly reproduced by the
international press. The next set of images to reach international
audiences, first in 2014 and much more intensely in 2017, were of “the
people” taking to the streets. The story was one of spontaneous “food
riots” that over time combined with more organized “pro-democracy”
protests, as part of a global surge of popular uprisings against
authoritarian regimes. The riots, according to the prevailing narrative,
were sparked by the lines, which were themselves the result of scarcity
brought about by the drop in oil prices, combined with government
mismanagement. This combination of factors has come to mark what is
widely regarded as the current crisis of Venezuela’s food system, part
of a broader political and economic emergency facing the nation.
However, a closer look at the current situation and its defining
features provides a fuller and more nuanced understanding of events.
First, it is important to look carefully at the food lines: their
composition, their location, and what products are being sought. The
people waiting in these lines have overwhelmingly been poor
working-class women—an attack on both everyday life at the household
level, as well as on the popular organization of the Bolivarian
Revolution, in which women have played a key role. The lines have also
largely formed outside supermarkets, where consumers wait to access
certain specific items that have mostly gone missing from the shelves.
These consist of the most consumed industrially processed products in
the Venezuelan food basket, particularly precooked corn flour. The
specific selection of these missing items—those deemed most essential to
the population—tends not to make the headlines, and this points to a
wider gap in media narratives. For while precooked corn flour has gone
missing, corn-based porridge has remained available; milk powder
disappeared from the shelves, but fresh dairy products like cheeses can
still be found, and so on.
Several other important factors point to holes in the dominant scarcity
narrative. First, the same items missing from shelves have continued to
be found in restaurants. Second, by their own accounting, private food
companies, including Polar, continued to maintain steady production
levels at least through 2015.^32
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-32> In
a 2016 interview, in fact, a representative from Polar spoke of the
recent addition of new products such as teas and gelatins to their
Venezuelan lines.^33
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-33> Third,
even before the government mounted a widespread response to the
shortages (as described below), corn flour consumption levels among both
higher- and lower-income sectors of the population remained steady from
2012 to 2015.^34
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-34> Thus,
while the shortages have undoubtedly caused tremendous anxiety and
insecurity, and while accessing certain goods has become more
time-consuming and complicated, Venezuelans have indeed found ways to
obtain them.^35
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-35> In
addition to enduring the lines, another channel has been the underground
economy, through which goods such as corn flour are sold at a steep
markup. While individuals have turned such practices into business
opportunities, private enterprises have done so as well, both by
hoarding goods for speculative purposes and by smuggling them across the
Colombian border. The regular discovery of stockpiles further suggests
that goods have been intentionally diverted from supermarket shelves.^36
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-36>
There are direct parallels between present-day Venezuela and Chile in
the 1970s under Salvador Allende, where the U.S. strategy, in the words
of Richard Nixon, was to “make the economy scream.”^37
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-37> The
United States employed the same methods of destabilization, including a
financial blockade, and supported the right-wing counterrevolution,
likewise manifested in shortages, lines, and street protests, among
other forms of disruption. The depressed prices of Chile’s main source
of foreign exchange, copper, parallels declining oil prices Venezuela.
While the extent of U.S. involvement in Chile’s counterrevolution would
not be fully understood until years later, when key documents were
declassified, overt U.S. aggression toward Venezuela is already evident
in the intensifying economic sanctions imposed by the Obama and Trump
administrations, as well as an all-out economic blockade that has made
it extremely difficult for the government to make payments on food
imports and manage its debt.^38
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-38> As
one State Department representative put it:
The pressure campaign is working. The financial sanctions we have
placed on the Venezuelan Government has forced it to begin becoming
in default, both on sovereign and PDVSA, its oil company’s debt. And
what we are seeing because of the bad choices of the Maduro regime
is a total economic collapse in Venezuela. So our policy is working,
our strategy is working and we’re going to keep it on the
Venezuelans.^39
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-39>
In Venezuela today, as in Chile in the 1970s, U.S. intervention relies
on an ongoing counterrevolutionary effort, with elites using the
revolutionary potential of the masses to frighten the middle class.^40
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-40> This
brings us to another key feature of the present conjuncture: the class
dynamics of the street protests, characterized as “food riots” in the
dominant narrative, particularly in the latest and most intense round in
2017. While the food lines began to appear in 2013, they grew over time,
and are widely considered a key factor in the transfer of control of the
National Assembly from the /chavistas/ to an opposition majority under
the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) at the end of 2015. Among MUD’s
campaign strategies had been its “La Ultima Cola” (The Last Line)
commercial, depicting dissatisfied people standing in the “last line”
they would have to endure, should they vote for the MUD, which once in
power would do away with the lines forever.^41
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-41> Of
particular note was the working-class slant of the commercial, with the
demographic composition of the people in the line reflective of the
majority of the population, in contrast to the party’s wealthier, whiter
base. It did not take long for the MUD to return to this base, however,
upon its electoral ascent, with the Second Vice President of the new
National Assembly, Freddy Guevara, openly calling for “the people” (that
is, MUD supporters) to take to the streets, “until the only option of
the dictatorship would be to accept the less traumatic solution.”^42
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-42>
An array of demonstrations ensued, from peaceful resistance to acts of
violence. Though portrayed in the media as nationwide, the actions were
largely limited to the wealthiest areas of a few cities, and ranged from
street barricades and vandalism to picnics and barbecues to candlelight
vigils to physical assaults to the hurling of “poopootovs” of human
feces.^43
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-43> But
among this seemingly disparate set of tactics, protesters took precise
aim on certain fronts, including a systematic attack on state-run social
programs, such as the burning of buses providing subsidized public
transportation and vandalism of public health facilities.^44
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-44> Especially
hard hit was the state agrifood apparatus, as the National Institute of
Nutrition was set ablaze, laboratories for the production of ecological
farming inputs were vandalized, and supplies destined for government
food programs were burned—including one on the order of 40 tons of
food—along with vehicles associated with these programs.^45
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-45> Also
among the targets, tragically, were people, specifically those seen as
typical /chavistas/—i.e., poor and brown-skinned. The most visible of
these was the attack on Orlando Figuera, a young Afro-Venezuelan
supermarket worker, whose gruesome burning alive, as countless onlookers
did nothing to intervene, was captured on video.^46
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-46> While
Figuera did not survive his attack, another victim from a similar
background, Carlos Ramirez, did, albeit with severe burns covering his
body. Ramirez later recalled pleading for his life, shouting “Don’t kill
me! I’m not /chavista/! Please don’t kill me!” as street protesters
brutally beat him and set him ablaze.^47
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-47>
The racial motivations of these attacks associated with violent street
protests, known as /guarimbas/, are apparent, and speak to what has been
described as a “class/race fusion” with “deep roots in the country’s
history.”^48
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-48> The
protesters are mostly the grandchildren of the middle class that emerged
in the period of modernization and “whitening,” with important links to
the country’s elite, forming a middle class-elite alliance known as
/sifrinaje/. The international media has largely ignored these nuances,
but a rare and telling exception is a 2017 article in /Bloomberg
Businessweek/ on nightlife among young protesters, whose gathering spots
include upscale rooftop shisha bars, with one protester quoted as saying
“You protest in the morning, but that doesn’t mean you stop living.”^49
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-49> While
the protesters are not homogenous, those featured in the article
challenge the narratives of repressed masses, while also highlighting
the differentiated impacts of the protests, as some maintain their
everyday lives in relative comfort, while others struggle to survive.
The violent protests disproportionately affected people in the poorest
sectors, who could not afford to skip work and for whom basic activities
became daily struggles, between transportation shutdowns caused by
roadblocks and fear of physical violence. Particularly disadvantaged
were the domestic and service-sector workers who had to travel each day
to and from the wealthier areas where the /guarimbas/ were concentrated.
The same areas are also the sites of most supermarkets, further impeding
food access for the poor and working class, already strained by
shortages, lines, and attacks on government food programs.
The image promoted by the international press has been one of “the
people” rising in response to a “humanitarian crisis” wrought by an
“authoritarian regime.” In reality, however, the combination of peaceful
resistance and blatant acts of /guarimba/ violence has only served to
further isolate the popular sectors from the opposition. A look behind
the headlines and images shows some glaring contradictions, particularly
in the description of /guarimbas/ as “food riots,” given the class and
racial composition of the protesters crying /hambre/ (hunger), described
above. Furthermore, a quick glance at social media, such as posts by
Freddy Guevara and others, dispels any illusion that the protests arose
spontaneously. Finally, both the targets and tactics of the
/guarimbas/—including burning food instead of redistributing it (indeed,
food designated for the poor), along with violent assaults on the poor
and dark-skinned—put the lie to any narrative of the /guarimbas/ as
“food riots” of the hungry.
An event far more aptly described as a “food riot” or “food rebellion”
was the Caracazo of 1989, mentioned above. At the time, reports in the
/New York Times/ and other outlets made few criticisms of the government
of President Andrés Pérez, but did include graphic accounts of mass
graves, people lined up at morgues in search of loved ones, imposition
of curfews, curtailing of civil liberties and press freedom, and death
estimates upwards of 600 people, with one doctor quoted as saying “no
country is prepared for what we have confronted this week.”^50
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-50>Today,
in contrast, while government repression is regularly denounced in the
/Times/ and elsewhere, a total of fourteen deaths associated with the
2017 /guarimbas/ have been directly traced to government security
forces, while twenty-three have been attributed to opposition
violence.^51
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-51> While
any government-sanctioned violence merits concern, attention, and
investigation, it nevertheless bears asking why the international outcry
has been so much greater than during the Caracazo, and, why, as one
media watchdog group has noted, “the imperfect state of democracy in
Venezuela” attracts singular attention, even as many atrocities in the
world today go underreported.^52
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-52>
This brings us back to oil. Petroleum is central to the dominant
narrative, which claims that the Chávez government won its popularity on
the strength of high oil prices and personal charisma, while Maduro’s
relative unpopularity is attributable to the plunge in prices and
political ineptitude. Once again, this familiar story distorts the facts
in key ways. First, as economist Luis Salas has shown, although oil
prices did indeed rise for much of Chávez’s presidency, its peak at or
around $100 per barrel was an aberration that occurred in the last stage
of Chávez’s presidency, between 2010 and 2012, whereas the average price
per barrel over the course of his presidency was closer to $55 per
barrel.^53
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-53> (This
happens to be right around the price at the time of writing.) Second,
the shortages that have attracted such interest are in fact part of a
broader trend seen over the course of the Bolivarian Revolution, through
both periods of high and low oil prices, and particularly at politically
heightened moments such as the lead-up to elections.^54
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-54> Furthermore,
the most recent shortages did not begin in 2014, when oil prices
dropped, but before, in 2013, while prices were still high.
All of this complicates simplistic narratives around present conditions
and events in Venezuela. But perhaps the most significant gap in such
analyses, which tend to center on the government and state, is the key
role of capital and its relations with the state. Bearing in mind the
revolution-counterrevolution dialectic, it is imperative to look at the
role of the elite, whose power extends throughout much of the agrifood
system, and who have exploited the current “crisis” to further
consolidate their power while simultaneously seeking to dismantle
redistributive agrifood policies. These forces have launched a material
assault on much of the population, disproportionately impacting the poor
and working class while further provoking an already frustrated middle
class. They are also attacking the legitimacy of the government, both
internally and externally, particularly by discrediting Venezuela’s
reputation for exemplary achievements in the fight against hunger and
toward food sovereignty.
Resistance: ‘En Guerra Hay Que Comer’
As one Venezuelan food sovereignty activist commented on the present
situation: “In war, one must eat.” Responses to the challenges have
taken many forms, and while a full discussion is beyond the scope of
this article, we will give a broad overview. First, if everyday life is
the main battleground on which present problems are playing out, it is
also the frontline of resistance. When the shortages began, among the
first lines of defense to be activated was a kind of parallel solidarity
economy, involving the sharing and bartering of food and other
essentials among neighbors as well as a reactivation of survival
techniques from the past. These have included a reclaiming of
traditional food preparation techniques—by necessity, as the foods
missing from supermarket shelves were substituted with foods that
remained locally available, thanks to prior public efforts toward food
sovereignty: plantains, cassava, and sweet potatoes for processed
starches, fresh sugarcane for refined sugar, and so on. Perhaps most
emblematic of the early days of the shortages was the substitution of
freshly ground corn for processed (precooked) corn flour in the
preparation of arepas, as many dusted off their grandmothers’ grinders
and put them to use. Simultaneously, unprecedented numbers of urban
dwellers began growing what they could on windowsills, patios, and in
community spaces, enlivening a nascent urban agriculture movement.
In the countryside, food shortages coupled with diminished access to
industrial inputs have prompted farmers to shift from commercial crop
varieties to traditional staple food crops, and from agrichemicals
toward agroecological practices, with certain parallels to Cuba’s
“special period.” Rural people who had not been directly engaged in
agriculture have been returning to food production, and are increasingly
joined by their urban counterparts. The surge in interest in
alternatives to industrially produced foods and the revaluing of the
countryside have provided openings for social movements already working
toward such transformations, helping forge connections between emerging
grassroots responses and prior efforts toward food sovereignty under the
Bolivarian Revolution. As one longtime activist and government official
reflected: “We had the vision, and had many things in place, but what we
lacked was urgency.… Now we have the urgency, we know what we need to
do, and have what we need to do it.”^55
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-55> One
example is the rural /comuna/ in the northwestern state of El Maízal in
Lara, a product of both the above-mentioned agrarian reform process and
the construction of /comunas/. When the shortages struck, the members of
El Maízal had already been working hard toward food sovereignty since
2009, particularly in corn and livestock production, and were able to
help meet the food needs of up to 15,000 families in surrounding
communities.^56
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-56>Another
grassroots effort, Plan Pueblo a Pueblo (People to People Plan), has
built on the preexisting organization of the /comunas/ to forge direct
links between rural producers and urban inhabitants. Formed in 2015, it
already reaches over 60,000 urban working-class families with regular
distributions of affordable fresh food. Other grassroots initiatives
include the Feria Conuquera (Conuco Fair), a large monthly alternative
market in Caracas featuring agroecologically produced fresh foods and
artisanal versions of many of the products missing from supermarket
shelves, the Mano a Mano Intercambio Agroecologico (Hand to Hand
Agroecological Exchange) bridging the urban-rural divide in the Andes,
and the Plan Popular de Semillas (People’s Seed Plan), an offshoot of
the new national Seed Law passed through a bottom-up policy-making
process in 2015.^57
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-57>
There has also been a host of government responses to the shortages.
Among the first was a reorganization of public management to prioritize
food sovereignty, including the creation of three separate ministries
out of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land in early 2016: the Ministry
of Urban Agriculture (believed to be the first of its kind globally);
the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture; and the Ministry of
Agricultural Production. This was followed by the creation of the Great
Sovereign Supply Mission, an umbrella body focused on securing national
supplies of food, medicine, and other basic goods. Among the government
responses to the shortages, those most intimately linked with popular
organizing are the Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (Local
Provisioning and Production Committees), known as CLAPs. CLAPs were
rapidly rolled out in 2016, initially targeting the poorest fifth of the
population, and now reach well over half. Through the CLAPs, the
government purchases food directly from suppliers, both private and
public, and coordinates with community organizations to distribute mixed
food packages to individual households. Communities are responsible for
organizing themselves into CLAPs, conducting local censuses, and running
regular distributions, in which the food is sold at subsidized prices in
units of twelve to fifteen kilograms. Through a massive coordinated push
from both above and below, CLAPs reached an estimated two million
families in their first year, and today there are more than thirty
thousand CLAPs throughout the country, with the aim of reaching six
million families—nearly three-quarters of the population—with regular
distributions by the end of 2018.^58
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-58>
CLAPs have had a mixed reception among food sovereignty activists, who
note their dependence on industrialized foods, half of which come
through the above-mentioned food importation complex. At the same time,
CLAPs have played a key role in mitigating the worst effects of the
shortages, and have become important vehicles for citizen organizing
around food, with 50 percent of CLAPs also directly involved in food
production. Food sovereignty activists (including those of Pueblo a
Pueblo and El Maízal) are thus increasingly opting to partner with the
CLAPs and attempting to push them in more transformative directions, as
part of a long-term vision of /agricultura cero divisas/, or
“zero-dollar agriculture.”
Conclusion
The situation confronting Venezuela today is far more complex than that
portrayed in the dominant narrative, and it demands more thorough
analysis. Through the lens of food and a focus on questions of power
related to race, class, gender, and geography, new elements emerge that
are key to understanding the present conjuncture. These include (1) food
as a vehicle for social differentiation over time, most fundamentally in
the creation and maintenance of an elite, an elite-aligned middle class,
and a class of “others”; (2) the concentration and consolidation of
power in the agrifood system, maintained through elite alliances, both
within and outside of the state structure, and through both overt and
hidden forms of power; (3) increasing homogenization, uniformity, and
controllability of the agrifood system, from production and importation
to consumption, through highly racialized notions of science and
modernity; (4) marketing strategies that forge intimate relationships
with the public so that specific industrially processed foods pervade
everyday life; (5) dependency on monopolized supply channels and on
supermarkets for access to such products; (6) the disappearance of such
products, constituting an attack on everyday life, particularly that of
the “others,” especially women; (7) the implication of the state in the
products’ disappearance, while the role of private capital remains
largely hidden; (8) the attempted consolidation of power by the elite
through proposals for the restoration of the missing products (and of
“order” more generally), in opposition to state programs and policies,
with appeals to the working class “others”; (9) a rallying of the middle
class in the name of “the people,” against the government and its
alliance with the “others,” by coopting social justice imagery while
committing racialized acts of violence; and, all the while, (10) a
further strengthening of state-capital relations, constituting a further
concentration and consolidation of power in the agrifood system.
While far from a comprehensive list, these elements reflect emerging
trends in Venezuela today, stemming from elite alliances long in the
making. Of particular note are the invisible—or so ubiquitous as to
effectively be invisible—mechanisms of control in the realm of everyday
life that facilitate the exertion of dominance over the population,
especially the working poor. This is particularly true of everyday
practices around food. Through processes of colonization, modernization,
and today, globalization, the entire structure of the modern industrial
food system—i.e., offering foods appealing to the tastes of the masses
(tastes conditioned over time), but in a highly controlled and
controlling way—can readily be made into a tool of control and
domination, as in Venezuela today. However, as we have seen, food is
also being used as a means of resistance.
The dominant narrative tends to obscure not only the main drivers of the
current crisis, but also the many responses coming from the grassroots.
This phenomenon is linked to the common portrayal of the Venezuelan
working class as passive victims rather than active agents. The same
stereotypes and “othering” that led to the common perception that most
Venezuelans were blindly following Chávez, with his petrodollars and
charisma, are today leading international media to ignore, among other
things, the unprecedented popular advances toward food sovereignty
manifesting at present. Such stereotypes of the poor and poverty are so
pervasive that few questions were asked when a /New York Times/ article
on starvation in Venezuela featured a picture of people eating one of
the country’s most popular dishes, or when an article in the
/Guardian/ entitled “Hunger Eats Away at Venezuela’s Soul as Its People
Struggle to Survive” reported that in the fishing village of Chuao,
“diets have shifted back to patterns more familiar to parents and
grandparents, to fish, root vegetables and bananas”—the type of dish for
which many foodies would pay dearly.^59
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-59>
While these contradictions might be painfully, even laughably apparent
to the average Venezuelan, such stories serve as powerful mechanisms
reinforcing the dominant narrative on Venezuela and shaping
international opinion. While we might expect as much from the Western
mainstream media, it bears asking why the same narrative is reproduced
so seemingly uncritically in intellectual and academic circles,
including those of the left. Could it be that we do not always leave our
own biases at the door, either?
This is where the importance of reflexivity comes in, as well as that of
praxis-based partnerships among scholars and grassroots movements, to
ensure that events and experiences we might not directly encounter
ourselves, from our own places of power and privilege, do not become
invisible, and that we question narratives that too comfortably fit our
own realities. As scholars and activists, we are faced with a choice, as
each day brings new forms of aggression against the government, people,
and process in Venezuela by the United States and its allies. We can
wait and offer post-mortem analyses of what could have been, or we can
join now with Venezuelan grassroots movements—not uncritically, as
constructive critique is needed more now than ever, but unequivocal in
our solidarity with their struggles. We can make pronouncements about
the “end of the cycle” of the rising left in Latin America, or we can
stand with those who see no place for themselves at “the end of the
cycle”: those for whom—and by whom—history is still being written, and
for whom giving up is not an option.
/*Ana Felicien* is a researcher at the Venezuelan Institute of
Scientific Research and a founding member of the Semillas del Pueblo
(Seeds of the People) movement. *Christina M. Schiavoni* is a food
sovereignty activist and doctoral researcher at the International
Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. *Liccia Romero* is a professor
of ecology at the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, and a
founding member of Mano a Mano–Intercambio Agroecológico (Hand to
Hand–Agroecological Exchange)./
Notes
1. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-1-backlink>This
article is adapted from a paper presented at the first international
conference of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI),
held at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,
March 17–18, 2018. The authors wish to thank the ERPI team, as well
Fred Magdoff, William Camacaro, and the many others, particularly
grassroots movements in Venezuela, who have contributed to this work.
2. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-2-backlink>For
an example of the limited range of debate on Venezuela in academic
circles, see “Debates: On Venezuela” in the fall 2017 issue of LASA
Forum.
3. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-3-backlink>George
Reid Andrews, “Spanish American Independence: A Structural
Analysis,” Latin American Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1985): 105–32.
4. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-4-backlink>Gonzalo
M. Quintero Saravia, Soldado de Tierra y Mar: Pablo Morillo, el
Pacificador (Madrid: Editorial EDAF, 2017).
5. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-5-backlink>Brian
Stuart McBeth, Juan Vicente Gómez and the Oil Companies in
Venezuela, 1908–1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
6. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-6-backlink>Josefina
Rios de Hernandez and Nelson Prato, Las Transformaciones de la
Agricultura Venezolana: De la Agroexportación a la
Agroindustria (Caracas: Fondo Editorial Tropykos, 1990).
7. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-7-backlink>Darlene
Rivas, Missionary Capitalist: Nelson Rockefeller in
Venezuela (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
8. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-8-backlink>Froilán
Ramos Rodríguez, “La Inmigración en la Administración de Pérez
Jiménez (1952–1958),” CONHISREMI: Revista Universitaria Arbitrada de
Investigación y Diálogo Académico 6, no. 3 (2010): 29–43.
9. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-9-backlink>Shane
Hamilton, “From Bodega to Supermercado: Nelson A. Rockefeller’s
Agro-Industrial Counterrevolution in Venezuela, 1947–1969,” paper
presented at Yale Agrarian Studies Workshop, November 4, 2011.
10. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-10-backlink>John
Lee Anderson, “Accelerating Revolution,” New Yorker, December 11, 2017.
11. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-11-backlink>Miguel
Tinker Salas, “Life in a Venezuelan Oil Camp,” ReVista 15, no. 1
(2015): 46–50.
12. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-12-backlink>According
to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an
average of 4.9 million people in Venezuela were undernourished each
year from 1998 to 2000 (representing a fifth of the 2000 population
of 24.5 million), and an average of 4.1 million from 2014–16, at the
height of the shortages (13 percent of a total population of 31.5
million in 2016). “El Estado de la Inseguridad Alimentaria en el
Mundo 2002 <http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y7352s/y7352s00.htm>,”
FAO, 2017, http://fao.org; <http://fao.org/;%C2%A0>2017 Panorama de
la Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional en América Latina y el Caribe
<http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7914s.pdf> (Santiago: FAO and OPS, 2017).
13. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-13-backlink>See
Miguel Angel Nuñez Nuñez, El Reto al Hambre (Merida: Universidad de
Los Andes, 1990); Margarita López Maya, “The Venezuelan ‘Caracazo’
of 1989: Popular Protest and Institutional Weakness,” Journal of
Latin American Studies 35, no. 1 (2003): 117–37; Charles
Hardy, Cowboy in Caracas: A North American’s Memoir of Venezuela’s
Democratic Revolution (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone, 2007); and George
Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the
Venezuelan Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013).
14. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-14-backlink>Mario
Sanoja Obediente and Iraida Vargas Arenas, Razones para una
Revolución (Caracas: Fundación Editorial el Perro y la Rana, 2017).
15. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-15-backlink>Oscar
Battaglini, El 27 F para Siempre en la Memoria de Nuestro
Pueblo (Caracas: Defensoría de Pueblo, 2011); “Dozens of Venezuelans
Killed in Riots over Price Increases
<https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/01/world/dozens-of-venezuelans-killed-in-riots-over-price-increases.html>,” New
York Times, March 1, 1989.
16. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-16-backlink>Constitution
of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
<http://www.venezuelaemb.or.kr/english/ConstitutionoftheBolivarianingles.pdf>,
available at https://venezuelanalysis.com/constitution.
17. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-17-backlink>Chandrika
Sharma, “Securing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of
Small-Scale and Artisanal Fisherworkers and Fishing
Communities,” MAST 10, no. 2 (2011): 41–61; Christina Schiavoni and
William Camacaro, “The Venezuelan Effort to Build a New Food and
Agriculture System
<http://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-061-03-2009-07_10>,” Monthly
Review 61, no. 3 (2009): 129–41.
18. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-18-backlink>Maria
Mercedes Alayón López, “Evaluación de las Políticas Alimentarias y
Nutricionales en la República Bolivariana de Venezuela Periodo
1980–2012” (master’s thesis, Universidad Simon Bolivar, 2016).
19. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-19-backlink>Ben
McKay, Ryan Nehring, and Marygold Walsh-Dilley, “The ‘State’ of Food
Sovereignty in Latin America: Political Projects and Alternative
Pathways in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia,” Journal of Peasant
Studies 41, no. 6 (2014): 1175–200; Christina M. Schiavoni, “The
Contested Terrain of Food Sovereignty Construction: Toward a
Historical, Relational and Interactive Approach,” Journal of Peasant
Studies 44, no. 1 (2018): 1–32.
20. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-20-backlink>“38
Countries Meet Anti-Hunger Target for 2015
<http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/%20177728>,” FAO, June 12,
2013; FAO, “Venezuela and FAO Create SANA, a New Cooperation
Programme to Eliminate Hunger,” FAO, April 16, 2015.
21. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-21-backlink>2017
Panorama de la Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional en América Latina
y el Caribe.
22. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-22-backlink>Luis
Enrique Gavazut Bianco, “Dólares de Maletín, Empresas Extranjeras y
Modelo Económico Socialista
<https://www.aporrea.org/ddhh/a184873.html>,” Aporrea, March 2014,
http://aporrea.org <http://aporrea.org/>.
23. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-23-backlink>Emanuele
Amodio, “Alteridades Alimentarias: Dietas Indígenas y Españolas al
Comienzo de la Conquista de Tierra Firme,” in Emanuele Amodio and
Luis Molina, eds., Saberes y Sabores: Antropología de la
Alimentación en la Venezuela Colonial (Caracas: Fundación Centro
Nacional de Estudios Históricos, 2017), 15–62.
24. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-24-backlink>Juan
Pablo Peña-Rosas et al., “Technical Considerations for Maize
Flour and Corn Meal Fortification in Public Health,” Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences 1312, no. 1 (2014): 1–7.
25. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-25-backlink>Edgar
Abreu Olivo and Elvira Ablan de Flórez, “¿Qué Ha Cambiado en
Venezuela desde 1970 en cuanto a la Disponibilidad de Alimentos para
el Consumo Humano?” Agroalimentaria 9, no. 19 (2004): 13–33.
26. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-26-backlink>B.
S. McBeth, Juan Vicente Gómez and the Oil Companies in Venezuela;
Orlando Araujo, Venezuela Violenta (Caracas: Banco Central de
Venezuela, 2013).
27. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-27-backlink>Andres
Schipani, “Empresas Polar: A Symbol of Resistance amid Venezuela
Crisis
<https://www.ft.com/content/9f038fae-d368-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0>,” Financial
Times, March 17, 2017; Pasqualina Curcio, “Concentración de la
Producción en Pocos Afecta el Abastecimiento: Apenas 20 Empresas
Controlan la Oferta de Alimentos y Medicinas en el País
<http://www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve/apenas-20-empresas-controlan-oferta-alimentos-y-medicinas-pais/%202016>,” Correo
del Orinoco, June 20, 2016.
28. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-28-backlink>Alberto
Chassaigne-Ricciulli, Venancio Barrientos-Acosta, and Alexander
Hernández-Jiménez, “Obtención de una Población de Maíz para
Tolerancia a Factores Adversos en Tres Estados de
Venezuela,” Bioagro 24, no. 3 (2012): 221–26; Alberto Chassaigne,
“Evaluación de Híbridos Experimentales de Maíz en Fincas de
Agricultores,” Gestión y Gerencia 4, no. 3 (2010): 4–19; “Programa
Maíz <http://danac.org.ve/press/test/>,” Fundación Danac,
http://danac.org; <http://danac.org/;> “Fundación Danac: El
Semillero de Venezuela
<http://www.quepasa.com.ve/economia/fundacion-danac-el-semillero-de-venezuela>,”
Diario Qué Pasa, September 29, 2014, http://quepasa.com.ve
<http://quepasa.com.ve/>.
29. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-29-backlink>Schipani,
“Empresas Polar.”
30. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-30-backlink>Carlos
Torelli, Globalization, Culture, and Branding (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013).
31. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-31-backlink>Gavazut,
“Dólares de Maletín.”
32. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-32-backlink>Pasqualina
Curcio Curcio, The Visible Hand of the Market: Economic Warfare in
Venezuela (Caracas: Ediciones MinCi, 2017).
33. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-33-backlink>“Declaraciones
del Director de Empresas Polar I
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSmShwmm17U>,” YouTube, May 25, 2016.
34. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-34-backlink>Pasqualina
Curcio, interview with the authors, June 2016.
35. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-35-backlink>Curcio,
interview with the authors.
36. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-36-backlink>Frederick
B. Mills and William Camacaro, “Venezuela Takes Control of its
Border as Bogotá and Caracas Bring their Cases to UNASUR
<http://www.coha.org/venezuela-colombia-border-dispute>,” Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, September 17, 2015, http://coha.org
<http://coha.org/>.
37. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-37-backlink>Francisco
Domínguez, “Las Complejidades de la Seguridad y la Soberanía
Alimentaria en Venezuela,” Revista de Políticas Públicas 20 (2016):
157–68.
38. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-38-backlink>Mark
Weisbrot, “Trump’s Tough New Sanctions Will Harm the People of
Venezuela
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/348276-trumps-tough-venezuela-sanctions-do-more-harm-than-good>,”
The Hill, August 28, 2017, http://thehill.com;
<http://thehill.com/;> Roger Harris, “Lamenting Venezuela’s
‘Humanitarian Crisis’ While Blocking Its Resolution
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/29/lamenting-venezuelas-humanitarian-crisis-while-blocking-its-resolution/>,”
Counterpunch, December 29, 2017; Misión Verdad, “Four Effects of the
Blockade Against Venezuela
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13529>,” Venezuela Analysis,
December 4, 2017, http://venezuelanalysis.com
<http://venezuelanalysis.com/>.
39. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-39-backlink>U.S.
State Department, “Senior State Department Officials on the
Secretary’s Travel to Austin, Texas; Mexico City, Mexico; San Carlos
Bariloche, Argentina; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Lima, Peru; Bogota,
Colombia; and Kingston, Jamaica
<https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/01/277739.htm>,” January 29,
2018, http://state.gov <http://state.gov/>.
40. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-40-backlink>Walden
Bello, “Counterrevolution, the Countryside and the Middle Classes:
Lessons from Five Countries,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45, no. 1
(2017): 21–58.
41. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-41-backlink>“La
Última Cola,” YouTube, November 20, 2015.
42. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-42-backlink>“Guevara:
Toda Venezuela a la Desobediencia Civil Masiva
<http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/oposicion/guevara-toda-venezuela-desobediencia-civil-masiva_183194>,” El
Nacional, May 19, 2017.
43. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-43-backlink>Girish
Gupta and Christian Veron, “Venezuelans Prepare Fecal Cocktails to
Throw at Security Forces
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-feces/venezuelans-prepare-fecal-cocktails-to-throw-at-security-forces-idUSKBN1852MZ>,”
Reuters, May 10, 2017.
44. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-44-backlink>“Queman
Más de 50 Unidades de TransBolívar
<http://www.primicia.com.ve/queman-51-unidades-de-transbolivar-fotos>,”
Primicia, May 22, 2017, http://primicia.com.ve
<http://primicia.com.ve/>.
45. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-45-backlink>“Opositores
Atacan Edificio CVAL de Barquisimeto e Incendian Clínica Móvil de
Misión Nevado (+Fotos)
<http://albaciudad.org/2017/04/incendian-cval-barquisimetoclinica-movil-mision-nevado>,”
Alba Ciudad, April 10, 2017, http://albaciudad.org;
<http://albaciudad.org/;> David Blanco, “Fotos y Videos: Guarimberos
Quemaron Sede del INN
<http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/sucesos/fotos-inn-despues-del-ataque-los-grupos-violentos>,” Ultimas
Noticias, April 12, 2017, http:// ultimasnoticias.com.ve; Lucas
Koerner, “Opposition ‘National Sit-In’ Unleashes Fresh Wave of
Violence, 4 Dead <https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13074>,”
Venezuela Analysis, April 25, 2017; “Venezuela Protesters Set 40
Tons of Subsidized Food on Fire
<https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuela-Protesters-Set-40-Tons-of-Subsidized-Food-on-Fire-20170630-0017.html>,”
Telesur, June 30, 2017, https://telesurtv.net <https://telesurtv.net/>.
46. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-46-backlink>Greg
Grandin, “Burning Man in Venezuela
<https://www.thenation.com/article/burning-man-venezuela>,” Nation,
May 26, 2017.
47. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-47-backlink>“Crimes
of Hate: Venezuelan Opposition Burns People Alive in Their Protests
<http://theprisma.co.uk/2017/07/24/crimes-of-hate-venezuelan-opposition-burns-people-alive-in-their-protests/>,”
The Prisma, July 24, 2017, http://theprisma.co.uk
<http://theprisma.co.uk/>.
48. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-48-backlink>Barry
Cannon, “Class/Race Polarisation in Venezuela and the Electoral
Success of Hugo Chávez: A Break with the Past or the Song Remains
the Same?” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 4 (2008): 731–48.
49. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-49-backlink>Andrew
Rosati, “The Manhattan of Venezuela Parties Against a Backdrop of
Crisis
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/the-manhattan-of-venezuela-parties-against-a-backdrop-of-crisis>,” Bloomberg
Businessweek, July 19, 2017.
50. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-50-backlink>“Dozens
of Venezuelans Killed in Riots over Price Increases”; “Price Riots
Erupt in Venezuela
<http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/28/world/price-riots-erupt-in-venezuela.html>,” New
York Times, February 28, 1989; Marc A. Uhlig, “Lines Form at Caracas
Morgue to Identify Kin
<http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/05/world/lines-form-at-caracas-morgue-to-identify-kin.html>,” New
York Times, March 5, 1989.
51. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-51-backlink>“In
Detail: The Deaths So Far
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13081>,” Venezuela Analysis,
July 31, 2017.
52. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-52-backlink>“Preferred
Conclusions: The BBC, Syria, and Venezuela
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13375>,” Venezuela Analysis,
September 19, 2017.
53. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-53-backlink>Luis
Salas Rodríguez, “El Mito de Chávez y el Petróleo a 100
<http://questiondigital.com/el-mito-de-chavez-y-el-petroleo-a-100/>,” Question,
June 15, 2016.
54. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-54-backlink>Curcio, The
Visible Hand of the Market.
55. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-55-backlink>Ulises
Daal, interview with the authors, January 15, 2018.
56. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-56-backlink>“Comuna
El Maizal Garantizó Abastecimiento de Carne para 15 Mil Familias
<http://www.albatv.org/Comuna-El-Maizal-beneficio-a-15.html>,” Alba,
January 14, 2018, http://albatv.org <http://albatv.org/>.
57. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-57-backlink>William
Camacaro, Frederick B. Mills, and Christina M. Schiavoni, “Venezuela
Passes Law Banning GMOs, by Popular Demand
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/01/venezuela-passes-law-banning-gmos-by-popular-demand-2/>,”
Counterpunch, January 1, 2016.
58. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-58-backlink>“Memoria
y Cuenta 2017: Los CLAP Tienen la Meta Permanente de Llegar a 6
millones de Hogares en 2018
<http://www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve/memoria-y-cuenta-2017-los-clap-tienen-la-meta-permanente-de-llegar-a-6-millones-de-hogares-en-2018>,” Correo
del Orinoco, January 15, 2018.
59. ↩
<https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/#endnote-59-backlink>Meridith
Kohut and Isayen Herrera, “As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are
Dying of Hunger
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html>,” New
York Times, December 17, 2017; Emma Graham-Harrison, “Hunger Eats
Away at Venezuela’s Soul as Its People Struggle to Survive
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/26/nicolas-maduro-donald-trump-venezuela-hunger>,” Guardian,
August 27, 2017.
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