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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14016">https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14016</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Interview with Angel Prado (Part II):
'The commune holds the solution to the crisis'</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Angel Prado and Ricardo
Vaz – August 22, 2018<br>
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<p><em>El Maizal commune is located in the middle of the
Venezuelan plains, between the Lara and Portuguesa
states. With a history of struggle and construction
of popular power, it is a flagship of the communal
movement in Venezuela. Continuing the discussion
begun in <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14005">Part
I of the interview</a>, we talked to Angel Prado,
communal spokesman, about the political project that
El Maizal is pushing forward, the questioned mayor’s
elections of December, the role of the commune in
the current context, and how the issue of the
commune should enter into the new constitution.</em><br>
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<p><strong>El Maizal produces corn but sells its harvest
to the state company Agropatria (1). However, if the
commune is to contribute to the construction of
socialism, should there not be control over the
entire productive chain?</strong></p>
<p>That is one of our aims in building the communal city
and accumulating forces to allow us to grow and move
forward. A first stage involves controlling more means
of production, because we need them to go beyond being
just primary producers and enter the cycle of
industrialization. Before that happens, we know we
will come up against a variety of enemies, but we will
also count on plenty of allies in the government and
throughout the country.</p>
<p>We believe that, with our experience and political
capital, we cannot continue being mere raw material
producers and hand everything over to the state or the
private sector, and then leave this region with no
supplies, which is absurd. The issue of
self-government is about people realizing that
territorial self-government is capable of solving
problems. And right now the priority is food, and our
economy is based on food production, so we cannot go
on producing and have the state or the private sector
take it all in the end.</p>
<p>For that reason, this year we are creating a network
of micro-companies, using very basic technology, that
will be able to receive, process, conserve and
distribute within the communities. For example, for
corn we have a small mill and we have the barn ready
to install a small machine to process corn. The only
step remaining is to build silos, even if in a
do-it-yourself fashion. The milk and meat production,
which has been increasing, is not being sold to the
state nor to the private sector, but is instead
distributed directly to the community. The same thing
goes for coffee, vegetables and other things we are
growing here in the commune and with small producers.</p>
<p>The next step is to set up a small industry that will
at least allow us to enter this dynamic and
consolidate an industrial system adapted to our
capacity. We will not have a mega-industry like Polar
(2), but we should at least be able to process what we
produce.</p>
<p><strong>With an agricultural commune, it is easy to
imagine making the organization around production.
But if we consider the case of an urban commune, how
can production be carried out there? What does an
urban commune produce?</strong></p>
<p>I believe that organization is born out of necessity.
Where there is a larger population, there is greater
necessity. What is not produced in the countryside can
be produced in the city. Here we can grow corn and
raise cattle because we have the right conditions to
do so, but in a city, in any house one can produce
clothing, or the eyeglasses one needs, watches and
shoes. One can also process food.</p>
<p>Now there is a certain “complex” we sometimes
perceive, a selfish attitude among those who live in
urban areas and believe that only campesinos should
produce, that only campesinos need to organize in
communes. If we were to apply the same logic, why not
consider those in the city to be mere parasites? If a
truck with food goes from here to Caracas, then it
should return from Caracas with clothing! This is an
important debate. We have told many communities in
Lara state, that it is fine to come to El Maizal and
buy something at a fair price, but what are you
contributing from your end?</p>
<p>In the urban barrios of big cities, where there is a
high concentration of people, there needs to be
organizing, be it around the problem of security, of
social coexistence, healthcare or services, in
addition to developing productive activities. The big
industries, the mechanical workshops, etc., are in the
city. The workers live in the barrios! Because of this
accumulation of people, there is also better access to
information and technology. In effect, we need to
dispel the myth that the productive commune can only
exist in the countryside.</p>
<p><strong>What do you think should be the role of
National Constituent Assembly (ANC), of which you
are a member, in the current political context?</strong></p>
<p>I believe the Constituent Assembly should have
assumed the role of legislating and taking tough
decisions in order to really tackle the economic
crisis. We have always seen the government depositing
a lot of trust in the private sector, allocating
dollars, and making concessions. We have given plenty
of opportunities to the private sector, and yet what
we see is the situation getting worse every day with
regard to food, prices, inflation, etc.</p>
<p>The ANC received a lot of support for two main
reasons, one had to do with the guarimbas and the need
to secure peace, which to a certain extent it did. The
other was the economic situation, which overwhelmingly
affects poor people, and is still to be solved. Now, I
believe the ANC also has the role of restructuring the
constitution and implementing a series of laws to
allow for an accelerated advance towards the communal,
socialist state that we believe in and which Chávez
proposed. There is a great deal of interest and hope
to see, once we win the elections (3), what political
course the country is going to take, keeping in mind
that the ANC has yet to take the important decisions
it should.</p>
<p><strong>How should the commune figure in the new
constitution?</strong></p>
<p>We believe the commune should be a theme that runs
through the entire constitution and not just an
article in it. If the commune marks the way forward,
then the whole constitution needs to reflect that, so
that the state is reoriented towards the communal
state and socialism. It makes no sense to have 350
articles and then add a 351st which states that the
commune exists! I believe that, from the first article
to the last, the issue of communes needs to cut across
the constitution, to make clear the kind of state we
want to build.</p>
<p>We should also point out that the commune is not just
about legal and administrative questions. It is also a
cultural issue; it has to do with building a new
culture of government, a new way of doing politics and
of managing and assigning resources. All of that needs
to be addressed by the new constitution. Furthermore,
when we talk about culture, that also has to do with
terminology. By contrast, when we talk about
municipalities or parishes, that is not ours!</p>
<p>Therefore, the commune also has to do with the
territorial organization of the country. El Maizal is
in two municipalities, in two states, but it is the
same phenomenon. More than a political and territorial
breakdown, the challenge is to create a new way of
organizing the territory based on the people’s logic,
the human geography, and do away with borders that
were inherited from colonialism. In a way, it is about
going back to Simón Rodríguez’s concept of toparchy:
the government from the territory and with the
territory.</p>
<p><strong>We also need to take into account Chávez’s
proposals regarding the commune that he made on many
occasions…</strong></p>
<p>I believe the proposal that President Chávez made was
quite concrete, and his proposals regarding the new
geometry of power are very interesting. On the
question of, territorial organization, we find his
proposals very appealing. For example, Chávez put
forth the idea of the communal council, and then that
of the commune. After the commune, he launched the
idea of the communal city and then came the communal
federation. Finally, at the highest level, we would
have a confederation of communes spanning the whole
country.</p>
<p>Now, I believe this should lead to an interesting and
intense debate in the ANC, with a view to recovering,
in case we have forgotten it, the proposal of
comandante Chávez. It is one way of moving forward. It
might not be the only or the most perfect one, but
Chávez studied presented it, and from where we stand
we believe it could be a viable way to carry out the
territorial organization of the new state as we move
towards socialism.</p>
<p>As I said, El Maizal is a territory that spans two
states, and our communal city will spread through many
parishes. The communal federation we envision, from
here to Buría, which is an area where there are four
communes, would incorporate territory across three
states: Yaracuy, Lara and Portuguesa. Therefore I
think the new constitution needs to address this new
territorial order the way Chávez presented it: with
new terminology, new forms, a new logic, and with the
new geometry of power in the territory.</p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong><br>
(1) In a forthcoming article, we will delve into the
productive activities of the El Maizal commune, as
well as its complex relationship with the state.<br>
(2) Venezuela’s largest food conglomerate.<br>
(3) This interview was conducted in May 2017, before
the May 20 presidential elections in which Nicolás
Maduro won reelection.</p>
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