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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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href="https://orinocotribune.com/the-new-society-will-emerge-in-the-commune-a-conversation-with-angel-prado/">https://orinocotribune.com/the-new-society-will-emerge-in-the-commune-a-conversation-with-angel-prado/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The New Society Will Emerge in the
Commune: A Conversation with Angel Prado | Orinoco Tribune</h1>
January 27, 2020</div>
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<p><strong>A grassroots leader talks about the commune as
a means to transform the society and the economy from
the ground up.</strong></p>
<p>El Maizal is a flagship rural commune between the
centrally-located Venezuelan states of Lara and
Portuguesa, which produces livestock, corn, and other
foodstuffs. Communal production in El Maizal is based on
socialized control of the means of production. The
democratic processes at the core of its initiatives
include collective decision-making in the working
process and in the distribution of the surplus, which is
often destined towards addressing medical and housing
problems in the community, supporting other communes,
and fostering educational initiatives.</p>
<p>In this exclusive interview with Angel Prado, El
Maizal’s key spokesperson, we talk about the role of the
commune in the transition to socialism, the communards’
critical support of the government and their plans for
an ambitious education and training initiative. Prado
also reflects on the tenth-anniversary landmark of the
commune and future challenges.</p>
<p>Since Venezuela is under siege by imperialism, there
should be a unified front in the struggle for
sovereignty. However, El Maizal Commune, like most
grassroots Chavista organizations, has a critical
attitude toward some governmental policies and
positions. What is your view of the dialectic between
support and criticism?</p>
<p>When El Maizal began occupying idle land and making it
collective, that was when Comandante Chavez was carrying
out a relentless war against the creole oligarchy’s
large estates… so El Maizal was born in the midst of an
economic and political struggle. In that context, we
necessarily entered into contradiction with the existing
order of things: the logic that prevails in our society.
Thus, our very history has made us into a critical
organization, fighting against the “anti-values” of
capitalist society that need to be destroyed. That is
why we cannot turn a blind eye to the way that a
non-Chavista logic is entering into certain political
spheres.</p>
<p>Since Chavez’s death, which made us especially
vulnerable in the face of US imperialism, the
government’s main focus has been to try to establish
tactical alliances with many sectors, sometimes even
privileging private capital. They did this in an attempt
to avoid, first, a civil war or a military intervention
and, second, to avoid the fall of the government.</p>
<p>Our principles, our objectives, and our commitment to
Chavez mean that we cannot agree with some of the
government’s policies. Many of the pacts privileging the
private sector have sidelined the potential of the
commune – hence we don’t support the government when it
comes to these policies. However, as long as the
government remains firm against imperialism (as it
does), we will remain firm in a unified front with it.</p>
<p>We will continue to constructively criticize [the
government], but no matter what, we will never
contribute to creating conditions for a military
intervention.</p>
<p>As you know, we cannot rule out a direct intervention,
and we have already witnessed indirect US action in
Venezuela. Moreover, it wouldn’t be the first time that
the United States has intervened in Venezuela [eg. the
1902-1903 naval blockade], and the continent has a long
history of interventions, the most recent being the
invasion of Panama [1989]. Also, it’s not for nothing
that the US has military bases in Colombia and Aruba.</p>
<p>Latin America has undergone a long history of US
interventions, toppled governments, and massacred
populations. However, Venezuela, now in the sights of US
imperialism, has been able to stand on its feet. That is
in part due to the international solidarity developed
over time, Chavez’s process of continental integration
(following Bolivar’s footsteps), and the internal
working-class organization.</p>
<p>For those of us in the popular movement – with our
degree of autonomy and our disposition to say what must
be said – we are among those who have created conditions
to impede US intervention, which would be catastrophic
not only for the people of Venezuela but for the
continent as a whole.</p>
<p>Backing up a bit: there are plenty of policies underway
that we don’t agree with. In the face of those policies,
we will be critical, not submissive. However, we
understand our unwavering commitment to the defense of
the Patria to be one of the keys in keeping the US from
bombing and massacring us. Actually, as opposed to the
governments of other oil-producing countries which were
also in the sight of US imperialism, the Venezuelan
popular movement’s closing of ranks with the government
when it comes to issues of sovereignty, is one of the
reasons why Maduro is still standing today.</p>
<p>As surprising as it may seem, I think we can say that
the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has so far defeated
the imperialist project in our country. That example
continues to inspire the peoples of Latin America, who
are now rising up against the neoliberal system to which
they have been submitted for so many years.</p>
<figure id="attachment_27258"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27258"
class="wp-caption"><img data-attachment-id="27258"
data-permalink="https://orinocotribune.com/the-new-society-will-emerge-in-the-commune-a-conversation-with-angel-prado/tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0/"
data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0.jpg?fit=740%2C555&ssl=1"
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data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}"
data-image-title="tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0"
data-image-description=""
data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0.jpg?fit=300%2C225&ssl=1"
data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0.jpg?fit=740%2C555&ssl=1"
src="https://i1.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0.jpg?resize=740%2C555&ssl=1"
alt="tierra_y_hombres_libres_1_0" data-recalc-dims="1"
data-lazy-loaded="1" width="740" height="555"><figcaption
id="caption-attachment-27258" class="wp-caption-text">In
El Maizal Commune, under an enormous saman tree,
visitors will find a sculpture of Hugo Chavez. Behind
it, the Venezuelan flag and the Zamora flag, which
reads “Free land and free men.” (Cira Pascual
Marquina/Venezuelanalysis)</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>When you close ranks with the government to
defend Venezuela, are you just defending sovereignty
or are you also defending the revolution?</strong></p>
<p>I would say that we are doing both. There is a
revolutionary process underway in Venezuela, but there
is also a reformist sector that has been in conflict
with us. The latter are getting rich from the
opportunities that emerge with the crisis. However, the
pueblo is aware of this problem, and the popular
movement is working hard to keep the revolutionary
process afloat.</p>
<p>I am sure that someday we will be strong enough not
only to combat US imperialism but also the sectors that
have been hurting the revolutionary project from within
– those that are personally benefiting in the context of
the crisis and the economic war.</p>
<p>The defense of the revolution happens in the
day-to-day. Defending the revolution takes place in the
daily building of the commune. It happens when a
campesino produces to satisfy his family’s needs, but
also when the campesino is committed to the society as a
whole.</p>
<p>It is a victory for the Venezuelan people that we are
still a sovereign nation, which is not a small thing.
The Venezuelan people also defend the revolution in the
day-to-day. This is a very important victory as well,
and it should be known to the world! Some of the
international left may not understand this. To them we
echo Chavez in saying, “There are people that have spent
their whole life pursuing a dream, but in practice, they
never built anything.” We have our method, our work, and
our project. We will defend our project, and our final
victory will be on the day that the “pueblo takes the
power in its hands.”</p>
<p><strong>From El Maizal, how do you understand Chavez’s
proposal of the commune? Is it about local
self-government or does it go beyond?</strong></p>
<p>The commune is Comandante Chavez’s political wager. He
positioned it centerstage… His slogan “Commune or
nothing!” [“Comuna o nada!”] drives the concept home.</p>
<p>The commune is the political system that Chavez
planted, pruned, and fertilized. He did this so that a
new society would bloom. The commune is the
reorganization of society as a whole, from the small to
the large, so that the people will be able to assume
power.</p>
<p>In Chavez’s way of thinking, the commune is destined to
end with the power that for so many years concentrated
around the bourgeoisie, the dominating classes, and
their obsolete state – a state that kept humble people
away from participation not only in the political sphere
but in all other spheres of life as well.</p>
<p>The commune is an interesting proposal: it offers a
form of popular self-government, it empowers us to
define our own destiny, to decide over our own
resources, to define our production model, and to
imagine our model of life. I think the commune is the
most viable way of overcoming the model imposed by
capitalism, which built a state machine to maintain
control over our resources while controlling the people
with certain forms of cultural, ideological, and
religious domination.</p>
<p>I would dare to say that the commune is not a proposal
just for the Venezuelan people. It’s a proposal for
emancipation for the peoples of the world. The popular
classes, the dispossessed, the majority – all of us have
to organize from the local level, building socialist
communes. From there [the pueblo organized in communes]
have to become the government of the people with real
control over our natural resources and over our economic
resources in general.</p>
<p>This is a popular project to change the political and
economic model from the ground up. From there, the
people have to become part of the project, assume it as
their own, and begin to govern first at a local level.
Also, to the degree that we, the pueblo, organize
ourselves, we will be able to defend our countries, and
even define the future of each country. At the end of
the day, that is the only way to cast off the yoke of
imperialism, which dominates and takes our resources,
even if it is the local bourgeoisies who govern us.</p>
<p>The commune is a broad-ranging project. It is a project
that integrates territories within a country, with the
pueblo as the cornerstone. I think the communes could be
the base from which to construct a true continental
integration. As Chavez would say, the commune is the new
Patria. It is the only political alternative when facing
capitalism.</p>
<p><strong>In the past few months, El Maizal has kicked
off an important educational initiative. In any
self-governed project, political education should be
one of the mainstays. Can you tell us more about the
proposal?</strong></p>
<p>For our second decade at El Maizal Commune, we have
laid out several strategic objectives. One of them is to
build a popular education system that will educate us
politically, prepare us technically, and give us tools
for working toward collective transformation. We have
built a commune and that is no small thing, but now is
the time to work toward a profound cultural
transformation. We need to create a new consciousness.
We need our pueblo to see things with its own criteria
and define its future through conscious processes of
debate and reflection, as well as acquiring mechanisms
for collective construction. To do so, we are developing
our own educational system.</p>
<p>We don’t want a pueblo that just repeats slogans, who
blindly follow some acronym or flag. This year we want
to make political education and technical training a
transversal objective. This objective shouldn’t be
narrow. We are thinking about a system that begins with
our youngest children who will be studying here in the
commune, and we hope to build our own school curriculum
for them. Adolescents, university students, workers –
all must be incorporated into a system which has
critical political formation at its center.</p>
<p>We need to cultivate patriotic consciousness and build
political consciousness. We also need to create communal
consciousness, and that happens by way of the example –
through real work in the territory, but also through
education and training.</p>
<p>We are doing this with the goal of culturally
transforming our society, which comes replete with
vices. It shapes us as submissive beings adapted to a
system of domination designed by capitalism and imposed
through violence.</p>
<p>The preparation of militant cadres is key for our
commune, but technical training is very important too
for all of our production processes. We aim for our
educational system to be holistic.</p>
<p>We work towards the organization of a new society, and
that requires a huge cultural transformation.</p>
<p><strong>The year 2019 marked the 10th anniversary of El
Maizal Commune. Can you give us a brief look at what
has been achieved so far?</strong></p>
<p>In ten years of communal construction here at El Maizal
Commune, we have accumulated experiences and had battles
on economic, political, ideological, electoral, and
organizational fronts. Over the years, we have had the
opportunity to form relationships with many people
inside and outside of the commune who have contributed
to the project. In other words, the commune is a
collective construction for collective emancipation.</p>
<p>On the productive front, we have been able to design an
economic system through which we finance diverse
projects and initiatives within our organization and our
community. We have been able to confront the difficult
economic situation by producing, and we have broadened
our distribution of food products and the redistribution
of surpluses. We have also been able to connect small
and midsize producers – both individual and collective
ones – to El Maizal’s productive system. That has
strengthened the commune as a whole.</p>
<p>Economic success is the key to political success. We
have worked toward sovereignty and autonomy,
consolidating projects that were initially precarious.
We have done so with the help and orientation of many.
Now we feel that we can initiate new projects in the
areas of education and agriculture.</p>
<p>In the electoral sphere we’ve had some victories in
tough battles against the political right, but also
against our own government and our own political and
electoral system. Now we have representation in the
National Constitutive Assembly, in the state parliament,
and in the townships in our territory. Those battles and
those spaces of representation are symbolically
important. That includes the representative posts that
were taken out from under our feet in the dispute
between the state, the party and the government, on the
one hand, and the people and the popular movement, on
the other.</p>
<p>Fortunately, in the electoral sphere, we were able to
overcome a problem common among politicians of all types
who often separate themselves from the people. That is
to say, we continue to be humble people, some of us with
responsibilities as elected representatives of the
people… but above all, we are communards.</p>
<p>On the ethical front, I think we have advanced a lot.
Today El Maizal has a wide network of young people
incorporated into productive, political, administrative,
and economic processes, and we are all in a permanent
debate, questioning our values and focusing on our
collective principles. Today El Maizal stands out not
only for its productive capacity but also because it is
an ethical example. Honesty and working-class solidarity
at the service of the organization and on the path
towards the construction of socialism – that is what we
are about. Many popular organizations around the country
and the world value this, and they recognize El Maizal
as a small experience that is interesting and worth
learning from. We have to live up to that!</p>
<p>I think that in our ten years on the communal path, we
have advanced quite a bit. El Maizal Commune is made up
of more than 22 communal councils. Our work reaches
beyond our territory, and we have begun a process of
connecting with other communities, with other
organizational projects. In fact, among our historical
objectives, the expansion of the communal project is
considered strategic. So far, we have expressed our
disposition to unite, and we have taken the first steps
towards the construction of a communal society.</p>
<p><strong>What are the main challenges you are facing for
the future?</strong></p>
<p>In the next ten years, we will work very hard to
consolidate a new productive system, organizing our work
democratically, moving toward industrialization, and
eliminating intermediaries, with the objective of
displacing the logic of capital and its monopolies,
which aims to control the basic needs of our population
while ransacking the humblest people.</p>
<p>To overcome the logic of capital, the only option is to
strongly unify the many popular and communal
organizations around the country (and the world). From
the ranks of true Chavismo we are called to give
solutions to the basic needs of our society. This will
have to happen hand in hand with the construction of new
mass organizations, with a political militancy that will
have to be up to the challenges we are facing. This is
not only about the political and economic sphere. We are
obliged to build a large organization to make it
understood that there is an alternative. It is also an
ideological battle.</p>
<p>El Maizal has large challenges. As we face them we will
grow. The process of building the communes is a learning
and teaching process too, and we know that folks from
around the world will continue to visit us and give us
guidance, just as we hope to visit other projects and
learn from them. Wherever life may take us, we will aim
to strengthen communal and collective popular projects.</p>
<figure id="attachment_27260"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-27260"
class="wp-caption"><img data-attachment-id="27260"
data-permalink="https://orinocotribune.com/the-new-society-will-emerge-in-the-commune-a-conversation-with-angel-prado/asamblea_el_maizal/"
data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?fit=620%2C366&ssl=1"
data-orig-size="620,366" data-comments-opened="0"
data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}"
data-image-title="asamblea_el_maizal"
data-image-description=""
data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?fit=300%2C177&ssl=1"
data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?fit=620%2C366&ssl=1"
src="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?resize=620%2C366&ssl=1"
alt="asamblea_el_maizal" data-recalc-dims="1"
data-lazy-srcset="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?w=620&ssl=1
620w,
https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?resize=300%2C177&ssl=1
300w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw,
620px"
data-lazy-src="https://i0.wp.com/orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/asamblea_el_maizal.jpg?resize=620%2C366&is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1"
width="620" height="366"><figcaption
id="caption-attachment-27260" class="wp-caption-text">An
assembly in El Maizal Commune, in March 2019. (Cira
Pascual Marquina/Venezuelanalysis)</figcaption></figure>
<p><em>Featured image: Angel Prado is the main
spokesperson for El Maizal Commune. (Marcelo Volpe)</em></p>
<p><a href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14772"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Source URL:
Venezuelanalysis.com</a></p>
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