Venezuelan workers take over paper-production plant
By
Berta Joubert-Ceci
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.
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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.”
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