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Venezuelan workers take over paper-production plant

Published Mar 16, 2005 3:08 PM

Faced with death threats to Bolivarian Republic President Hugo Chávez and not-so-veiled pressure from the United States, the youthful Venezuelan Revolution is tenaciously pushing ahead new anti-capitalist measures for the benefit of its working-class population. One of these is the new Invepal, SA, enterprise.


President Hugo Chávez meets
with paper workers who
took over their plant.

During the last World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Workers World interviewed Elio Colmenarez, executive assistant to Venezuelan Minister of Labor María Cristina Iglesias, who had been working closely with the workers in the Venepal (now Invepal) paper industry. The following background of the developing enterprise is based on that conversation with Colmenarez.

Venepal or Venezuelan paper is an industry that for 50 years milled paper products, and one of the two major paper companies in the country that was financially successful until 1996. Due to production cutbacks and abandonment of markets, it then closed some of its operations.

Two years ago Venepal filed for bankruptcy and 18 months ago it closed the plant, laying off its workers. Venepal workers refused this closure and remained in the plant. They continued operations as best they could until last August when the company completely ceased to buy raw materials.

Since then, workers have stayed in the plant, preventing management from transporting raw material or machinery out. At the same time workers organized street mobilizations demanding the government expropriate the plant.

On Dec. 2, 2004, the Banking Tribunal ruled for Venepal bankruptcy. This provoked an increase of workers’ mobilizations.

Then on Jan. 7, 2005, the Venezuelan National Assembly ruled that the Venepal estate is a public utility. As such, it is subject to state action, aimed to protect the industry as important for Venezuela’s paper production and as a source of jobs.

Ten days later, on Jan. 17, the government confirmed the expropriation of all Venepal’s assets including the processing plant, the 5,600-hectare forest, the electric plant, etc.

This decree also stated the right of the workers to co-administer the plant. At the moment the workers are organizing a cooperative to manage the plant in conjunction with the state. In two to three years, the plant should be in the hands of the workers as their collective property.

Venezuela now imports more than 60 percent of the materials used for paper production. The educational missions or programs that the Bolivarian Revolution has been implementing require massive amounts of paper products for books, notebooks and other materials.

A leap forward

Colmenarez said the seizure is a qualitative leap that not only will allow the production of educational material but will also mean a political advance. It will mark the beginning of what is called “co-administration,” an effort between the 352 workers who remained in the plant and the state, where both will share the responsibility of running the industry.

On Jan. 31 Labor Minister María Cristina Iglesias said, “Now the new struggle for the endogenous development of the homeland begins, which means working in equal conditions, the workers along with the revolutionary government, for the benefit of the community and for all the Venezuelan people rather than for the individual’s benefit.”

On Feb. 6, in the “Aló Presidente” program, President Chávez hosted the Vene pal workers, now called the Venezuelan Industry of Pulp and Paper or Invernal, SA, created Jan. 19. There it was announced that the state will own 51 percent and the workers’ coop the remaining 49 percent of the enterprise. This model could also be repeated in other paper plants, particularly those in Maracay.

Chávez said that this is “the year of the economy and of a lot of politics.” He said that much effort will be placed in developing a productive economy, in the framework of the “leap forward” (advancement both political and economically) of the revolution.

He warned owners of idle businesses: “If an entrepreneur abandons his ship, we will take it over.”

To direct the cooperative enterprise away from the capitalist model, Chávez has said, “The revolutionary cooperative must be developed within 21st-century socialism.”

Along with the Cuban government, Venezuela’s is now an example to the world of one that works on behalf of its people and its workers and not on behalf of multinational companies.

And with Cuba, Venezuelans also expect a hostile reaction from U.S. imperialism. Already the U.S. is mounting a campaign against the Bolivarian Revolution with the participation of right-wing Colombians, Cuban exiles in Miami and the Venezuelan opposition at home.

U.S. targets Venezuela

In the March 13 Financial Times of London, Andy Webb-Vidal wrote: “A strategy aimed at fencing in the government of the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter is being prepared at the request of President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, senior U.S. officials say.”

The article quotes U.S. Defense Department official Roger Pardo-Maurer: “Chávez is a problem because he is clearly using his oil money and influence to introduce his conflictive style into the politics of other countries.”

U.S. corporations and the Pentagon are troubled by Venezuela’s growing excellent international relations, not only within Latin America and the Caribbean region where the process of economic and social integration is going full speed, but in other areas of the world as well.

During a recent trip to India, Chávez was received very warmly. In the Indian Express, reporters Bidyut Roy and Aninda Sarda wrote: “Fourteen years after the fall of the Communist-ruled Soviet Union in 1991, the Left’s search for an international father figure seems to have ended. Kolkata opened its arms wide as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez arrived here this evening. Left leaders displayed their ‘new inspiration’ as the Left Front government of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya felicitated Chavez.”

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami irritated Washington by visiting Venezuela and signing more than 20 agreements of trade and cooperation, among them deals for a tractor factory, housing, etc.

U.S. imperialism is working round the clock to find ways to destabilize the young Bolivarian Revolution. Scores of CIA and Israeli Mossad agents are deployed in Venezuela. The opposition, weakened by Chávez’s growing popular support, is being regrouped by Washington. Assassination threats against Chávez continue.

Colombian paramilitaries were caught last year in the center of Caracas training to kill the president. A few months ago Danilo Anderson, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the CIA involvement in the 2002 coup, was assassinated.

Fidel Castro said the Cuban Revolution is well grounded by now, but the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution is at a crucial juncture.

This revolution needs the unrelenting and total solidarity from the international community. It is the hope not only for the Venezuelan people but the people in Latin America, the Caribbean, and well beyond who have suffered the misery and exploitation of imperialist domination.

More and more people feel, “It is our revolution, a beacon for the future of our children, and we must defend it with all our means.”