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<h1 class="reader-title">Building ‘Patria’: A Conversation with
Sergio Requena of the Productive Workers’ Army</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Cira Pascual Marquina -
Nov 16th 2018</div>
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<p><em>Born in 1974 in Puerto Ordaz, in the industrial
heartland of Venezuela, Sergio Requena is a worker
at CVG CARBONORCA[1]. He is a key player in the
formation of the “<a
href="https://ejercitoproductivoobrero.wordpress.com/">Productive
Workers’ Army</a>,” a voluntary initiative that
takes on the challenge of jumpstarting industrial
plants (both state‐owned and worker‐controlled).
Since 2016, the organization’s “Productive Workers’
Battles” have become a reference amongst those
committed to rebuilding the industrial muscle of the
nation. The project has brought hundreds of workers
together and put some twelve industrial plants back
on their feet. Of the twelve Workers’ Battles
carried out by this volunteer brigade, eight
happened while Requena headed CORPIVENSA[2] and was
able to channel some state resources to the
initiative. Today that support has dried up, but the
struggle continues.</em></p>
<p><strong>I would like to begin by asking you to give
us a brief overview of the situation of Venezuela's
state-owned factories today.</strong></p>
<p>As is the case with most of Venezuela’s productive
apparatus, the state enterprises are in crisis.
Furthermore, those enterprises are fragmented and
disjointed: each plant, each factory has its own
specific objective, its own logic, meaning that there
is a large number of isolated initiatives. Each is on
its own, with nothing bringing them together in a
network, because there isn’t a national production
plan, nor is there a plan that would organize even the
whole state-owned sector.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, there are some deliberate
obstacles put up to production from within, from the
enterprises’ leadership. So the main problem is that
there isn’t a centralized production plan, but add to
that the fact that within the crisis (and the disorder
that comes with it) some particular economic interests
have surfaced, and you get the picture.</p>
<p>[State firms form] an archipelago of islands, each
with its own little ruler, who single-handedly decides
if the enterprise will produce, under what conditions,
what happens with the product, etc. Additionally, he
decides who they will contract to acquire raw
materials and services. In general, a director will
contract outside of the state-owned enterprises, and
will do so with the aim of seeking personal economic
benefits.</p>
<p>When President Maduro launched the <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/economic-recovery-plan">Economic
Recovery Plan</a>, he referred to the fact that
there are many companies producing very little or
nothing at all. Our view is that there are two roots
to the problem: there is no productive plan for state
enterprises, and private objectives and interests
organize production (or lack thereof) in state-owned
plants.</p>
<p>There is another bottleneck: in many of these plants,
the bosses argue that production has come to a halt
because the enterprise doesn’t have funds to purchase
the machine parts that need to be acquired so that the
operations can get back on track. But it turns out
that the machine parts that have to be replaced come
from abroad and must be purchased in US dollars.</p>
<p>Historically in Venezuela, and especially in state
enterprises, machines and machine parts came from
abroad and were purchased in dollars. All this
happened without finding out if within the country,
and particularly within state enterprises,
partnerships could be found leading to joint
solutions. Today, the bosses continue to request
dollars (which are not available) and they justify the
stalled production by pointing to funding limitations
instead of looking for solutions that can be found
within [the country].</p>
<p><strong>You are part of a collective volunteer
project for the recovery of the country's productive
apparatus, both state-owned and worker-controlled
enterprises, which has come to be known as the
“Productive Workers’ Army.” In 2016, a group of
workers from the industrial heartland of Venezuela
in Bolívar State began to recover a state enterprise
called “La Gaviota,” a fish processing plant. Can
you tell us about this initiative?</strong></p>
<p>I would like to begin by going back to 2013. It was
the beginning of the crisis, and the workers of three
privately-owned factories occupied the plants after
the owners infringed workers’ rights and sabotaged
production. The companies were <a
href="http://indorca.com/quienes-somos/">Indorca</a>,
<a
href="http://www.minppibes.gob.ve/web-final/noticias.php?id_noticia_busqueda=667">Calderys</a>,
and Equipetrol in Guyana's industrial ring. The
process of recovering the plants was collective and
very efficient. Soon after their occupation, the
plants were back on a regular production schedule.
These three plants continue to operate under worker
control.</p>
<p>Three years later, in February 2016, folks from La
Gaviota in Cumana [Sucre State], a state‐owned plant,
invited workers from Indocra, Calderys, and Equipetrol
plus others to jumpstart the fish flour plant’s
industrial oven. It was a five-day journey where the
knowledge of each worker plus a lot of collective
creativity (and sacrifice) allowed us to jumpstart
production. We did this with no resources beyond our
knowledge and our tools… Really, in five days we were
able to raise production from zero to 100 percent!</p>
<p>During those five days, we worked long hours and
slept in the plant. The work was voluntary and the
whole process of recovery became a crash course – we
all learned a lot, and all the workers who
participated were remoralized. The fact is that each
“Productive Workers’ Battle” is a school in which we
teach each other, we share knowledge, and we look for
solutions collectively...</p>
<p>And this brings us back to what I was saying earlier:
by now there is plenty of evidence that workers are
capable of recovering stalled factories and that large
investments are not necessarily needed, even when
production has dropped to zero.</p>
<p><strong>La Gaviota was the first in a long and
ongoing campaign to recover state‐owned factories
and factories under worker control.</strong></p>
<p>Yes, after La Gaviota we went to Maquinarias Barinas
in Barinas State, and there we waged the second
battle. In the factory, an important part of the
machinery was non‐operative. Actually, there was a
machine room with all new equipment that had never
been made operative. It was never put to use and
repairs were needed. We left it at about 80 percent of
its productive capacity.</p>
<p>Again, the collective process of getting the plant
back on its feet (well, on its feet for the first
time!) remoralized the factory’s staff.</p>
<p>In this battle, we also implemented a parallel
learning space, an initiative that is now key to every
battle and that we call “Collective, Integral and
Permanent Self-Formation.” We organized a workshop on
freehand drawing of mechanical parts.</p>
<p>Then, in March of 2017, we carried out a battle in
Planta Madre Wuanaguanare, a factory that produces
food-processing machinery in Portuguesa State.</p>
<p>Little by little the Productive Workers’ Battles
began to draw attention. They began to be known, and
we got an invitation to head up CORPIVENSA, a state
initiative to promote industrial and productive
sovereignty in the country. During the seven-month
period that we were in CORPIVENSA, we were able to
carry out eight “productive battles.” Since we had
institutional support, we had that extra muscle. Of
the eight productive battles that we carried out
during that period, four were in gas cylinder plants,
and one was in a Nutrichicha plant that produces
rice-based drinks for the School Alimentation Plan. We
also waged another battle in La Gaviota, and finally a
battle at the <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14059">Amuay
Oil Refinery in Falcon State</a>.</p>
<p>We have had 12 productive battles in total, and we
have begun to call ourselves a “Productive Workers’
Army.” Some 2,200 people have participated in these
battles, so we feel that we are an army that can be
deployed to any plant in any state to raise
productivity.</p>
<p>Our army is very varied… Our army is made up of both
active workers and retired workers, both workers from
the public and the private sector – in short, people
with very diverse experiences. But the most important
thing about our army is that it is made up of
revolutionaries who want to overcome the current
crisis…</p>
<p><strong>When you go to a factory, your main goal is
to jumpstart production, but the educational process
is also very important. Can you tell us more about
this?</strong></p>
<p>First, I should clarify something. We don’t only
repair machinery, we also repair consciousnesses.
There is a mystique[3] to the whole process. When the
Productive Army goes into a factory, a process of
remoralization begins. The plants’ workers participate
in the recovery of their factory and transform their
own reality. This practice of doing (this praxis, if
you will) opens the way to what Che called creating
the new man and the new woman. Jumpstarting production
with our own hands, with limited resources, getting
the factory back on its feet, yes, all that is
important. But if we do that and we fail to remoralize
workers, then the plant will fall back into its
earlier slumber.</p>
<p>Raising morale is through praxis, that is key for us,
but we also foster parallel collective educational
activities, as I said before when we mentioned the
ongoing “Collective, Integral and Permanent
Self-Formation” that we undertake. During the
Productive Battles, we share experiences – skills
acquired through work – and we also address
organizational problems.</p>
<p>As a result of this, the plant’s workers get
organized in workers’ councils, in feminist brigades,
and in Productive Workers’ Councils (CPT)[4]. Ensuring
that some form of organization grows out of the
experience is fundamental, as workers’ organization is
the only thing that will guarantee the continued
production in a plant.</p>
<p>Basically, our main goal is to break with the inertia
that installs itself due to bureaucracy: inertia that
ends up killing production. After we leave, there must
be internal conditions (not only material conditions)
to continue the work, and that is why we emphasize
organization.</p>
<p><strong>The “Chinese Model”[5] has discursively
entered the public sphere. On the other hand, your
model is a socialist model that points to workers’
control and seeks to bring solutions to our problems
from below and from within. It could even be called
a Guevarist and patriotic model, couldn't it?</strong></p>
<p>We refer to our effort, our collective epic struggle,
as an “Admirable Campaign,” a term that recalls
Bolivar’s campaign for the liberation of Venezuela’s
western regions [1813]. We understand that there is a
crisis situation, with some elements of conspiracy and
economic war. Yet on top of that, there are serious
management problems in public enterprises, corruption
and other interests that don’t contribute to a
solution. Faced with this complex situation, many are
looking for solutions elsewhere.</p>
<p>For our part, we cast our lot with the people of
Venezuela. The gaze of Venezuela has historically been
directed to the exterior: we felt that we couldn't
solve our own problems. Chavez offered a brief respite
from that logic; with him, we were able to see what we
had, we recognized ourselves. I think it is time that
we begin again to acknowledge that we can do things,
that we do have skills. Our productive apparatus has
practically come to a complete halt, but there are
thousands of men and women who are committed to coming
out of this crisis, and they have incorporated
themselves to the Productive Workers’ Army. These
workers do not want to be spectators. They want to be
subjects again, reactivating our participatory and
protagonic democracy.</p>
<p>So indeed our proposal is patriotic. We believe that
we can do and make things, that we aren’t doomed. We
have a strong conviction that the people, the workers,
the working class… together we can bring ourselves out
of the crisis that we face in the industrial sector
and elsewhere. We are the ones who will build the
sovereign and emancipated Patria [homeland] that
Chavez aspired to create with the protagonic
participation of the people. We are convinced that we
can do this, that patriotic Venezuelans can do this,
although we will always welcome with wide open arms
comrades from other countries, people who are
committed to socialism. But this is a war that we have
to wage and that we must win. Only the people of
Venezuela can solve the problems of Venezuela, and
from our point of view, this must be done with Chavez
and with commitment to participatory and protagonic
democracy.</p>
<p><strong>One of the most intense debates within
Chavismo right now is the debate about the “ethical
referent” and the need (since Chavez’s death) to
point to exemplary experiences that might bring the
project out of the stagnation that we are facing
now. There is a mystique around <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/el-maizal">El
Maizal Commune</a> and the <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13966">Admirable
Campesino March</a>, but in the working class, in
the industrial sector, the Productive Workers’ Army
has become a referent as well. Can you talk about
this?</strong></p>
<p>When we talk about ethical referents, we must talk
about revolutionary coherence, and revolutionary
coherence is a kind of North Star that guides our
praxis. Our objective is to help to recuperate the
productive apparatus of the nation. For this to
happen, as I said before, there must be a process of
remoralization and organization, which is key to the
success of our initiatives.</p>
<p>In the Productive Workers’ Army we teach by example,
with a praxis that brings together political and
social commitment with work. So we hope that we will
carry with us a school for the workers with whom we
work, arm in arm, during the Productive Battles.</p>
<p>Sacrifice is, like it or not, an essential part of
our epic struggle. We often travel for thousands of
kilometers to get to a factory; we leave our family
behind; we sleep very little and when we do, we sleep
in the plant… All this tends to change the plant's
dynamics. We can actually say that we – the hundreds
of men and women of the Army – teach by example. The
sacrifice that a Battle entails is key to a shift
towards a revolutionary ethos.</p>
<p>All this, of course, happens with President Chavez as
a guiding light. His example fills us with strength
day in and day out. He taught by example and he
sacrificed himself for us. In return, we commit our
lives to our country.</p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>[1] CARBONORCA is state-owned plant producing anodes,
a component needed to process aluminum.<br>
[2] CORPIVENSA is a state institution whose mission is
to encourage industrial sovereignty and productivity.<br>
[3] In progressive Latin American contexts, mística or
mystique refers to nonmaterial values such as morale,
hope, and confidence.<br>
[4] A Productive Workers’ Council (CTP for its Spanish
initials) is an organizational figure promoted by a
February 2018 Constituent Assembly law. CTPs are meant
to encourage production in a plant or factory, be it
public or private.<br>
[5] The term “Chinese Model” is used in Venezuela to
refer to the growing participation of Chinese capital
in the reorganization of the economy. Chinese
officials are also assuming advisory roles in the
Caribbean nation, encouraging “development”
initiatives such as “Special Development Zones”:
territories where certain laws do not apply to
encourage foreign investment.</p>
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