ENGLISH EDITION/The artillery of ideas INTERNATIONALFriday, February 1, 2013 | Nº 144 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) closed its summit in Santiago, Chile last weekend after strengthening multilateral ties with the European Union and creating the conditions for greater integration in the Americas. CELAC, which includes every country in the Americas except Canada and the United States, has become the region’s most important integrationist organization, incorporating 33 nations and more than 591 million people. Pages 2-3

Murders downin VenezuelaThis week the Venezuelan government announced the murder rate is down by 15% across the national territory. Kidnappings, previously a serious problem based in economic inequalities, are also down. The figures, explained Interior and Justice Minister Nestor Reverol, go to show that “the supervision, control, and security measures which are being applied have produced positive results”. page 4

Security

Prison evacuatedto end violence

Venezuela’s penitentiary services ministry deals with prison rioting. page 5

Culture

Venezuela’s film industry flourishes

A National Day of Cinema was celebrated with more film productions. page 6

Venezuela haslowest inequality

Statistics show Venezuela has the lowest inequalityin Latin America. page 6

Economy

Russia makes biginvestments in Venezuela page 7

Opinion

International media hatefest on Venezuela continues page 8

Municipal elections in Venezuela scheduledfor July 14

T/ AVN

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced yesterday that elections for mayors and members of municipal and metropolitan councils will be held on July 14 of this year.

CNE President Tibisay Lu-cena announced the official date of the elections and said that candidates may regis-ter from April 11 to 15, while campaigning will occur from June 12 to July 11.

The CNE decided to extend the period during which citi-zens may register to vote, which was originally Janu-ary 30, but will now last un-til February 15.

Lucena clarified that the registration period is for those registering to vote for the first time, and urged young people who will turn 18 before the election to approach one of the CNE’s 150 locations through-out the country.

The CNE projects that almost 40,000 more men and women will run in the municipal elections, either through political parties or independently.

Citizens who have been selected to act as poll work-ers for this election cycle will be notified about the training workshops they should attend.

Voting in the municipal elections can be more compli-cated, Lucena said, as some voters will have to mark up to 10 choices on four different ballots. However, all the steps have been reviewed and test-ed by the CNE to ensure that the process is as easy as pos-sible and that voters have the information they need ahead of time.

“We are going to have, as we had last year, laboratories and many tests of the Inte-grated Authentication Sys-tem to determine the time it takes to vote”, she said.

Latin America and Caribbeanshow unity and diversity

School openedin Chavez home

Venezuela’s government opened a new preschool Tuesday in the hometown of ail-ing President Hugo Chavez, who remained in Cuba receiving treatment seven weeks after undergoing cancer surgery.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro attended the inauguration of the preschool in the ru-ral town of Sabaneta in the western state of Barinas. It is named “Mama Rosa,” after the grandmother with whom Chavez and his brother, Adan, lived during their childhood.

Children sang in a classroom while Ma-duro toured the school along with Adan Chavez, who is the governor of western Barinas state.

Adan Chavez said the school was built on the land where the home of their grand-mother with a palm-thatched roof once stood.

The artillery of ideas

Celac moves forward with European cooperation,praises role of Venezuelan in promoting unity

2 Impact | Friday, February 1, 2013

T/ COIP/ Presidential Press

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) closed its

summit in Santiago, Chile last weekend after strengthening multilateral ties with the Eu-ropean Union and creating the conditions for greater integra-tion in the Americas.

The encounter, attended by 60 international delegations, produced a 48-point Declara-tion of Santiago that lays out the framework for what Chil-ean President and host of the summit, Sebastian Pinera, called “less vertical and more horizontal” relations with Europe.

“We reaffirm our commit-ment to adopt policies that promote commerce and invest-ment between the countries of the Celac and the EU, con-vinced that such policies will contribute to sustainable de-velopment and can encourage economic growth as well as job creation in both regions, espe-cially for the youth”, reads the declaration.

Such policies must “be based on cooperation and comple-mentary relations, solidarity and social inclusion, and envi-ronmental responsibility”, the statement continues.

Celac, which includes every country in the Americas except Canada and the United States, has become the region’s most important integrationist orga-nization, incorporating 33 na-tions and more than 591 million people.

The EU represents Celac members’ greatest single eco-nomic partner, accounting for $518 billion in foreign direct in-vestment in the region in 2010, more than Russia, India and China combined.

According to Herman Van Rompuy, President of the Euro-pean Council, while differences between the two blocs exist, the Celac represents “an important partner in the international community, not only economi-cally, but also politically”.

“This shared conviction that we depend on each other is what forms the base of our relation”, Van Rompuy said.

A simultaneous People’s Sum-mit also took place in Santiago during the Celac meeting which

CHAVEZ PRESENT The Celac’s founding confer-

ence took place in Caracas in December 2011 under the lead-ership of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Although Chavez could not attend the proceedings in Chile last weekend, the head of state sent a letter of solidarity to the summit, which was read aloud by the South American coun-try’s Vice President, Nicolas Maduro.

“As you all know... I am fight-ing once again for my health in revolutionary Cuba”, Chavez wrote. “For this reason, these lines are the way for me to

saw members of progressive social movements and politi-cal parties from the Americas and Europe discuss strategies to link different struggles for social justice across national boundaries.

In a closing declaration, the parallel summit expressed it’s support for the peace pro-cess currently being carried out between Armed Revolu-tionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels and the Colom-bian government as well as its “full solidarity for the Pales-tinian people and all those op-pressed by colonizing powers and imperialism”.

make myself present in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. They are to reaffirm, today more than ever, the active commit-ment that Venezuela has with the historic cause of unity”, he stated.

Chavez, who is recovering in Cuba from cancer-related sur-gery performed on December 11, made a call in his missive for a common energy agenda and increased social spending as a way to stave off the type of eco-nomic crises that have afflicted Europe and the United States.

“The only answer to the crisis being offered by the first world has been the cutting of social spending and public invest-ment. The Celac can sustain economic growth with heavy social investment, agreeing on a common agenda for equality and the recognition of the uni-versal rights that each one of our citizens has to receive free health care and education”, the head of state wrote.

During the summit, various representatives of the different Celac member states praised the Venezuelan President for his vision and efforts in forg-ing the new integrationist or-ganization.

“If the word solidarity needs a synonym, I believe it should

be Hugo Chavez”, said the Presi-dent of the Dominican Republic Danilo Medina, explaining the enormous benefits his country has received as a result of the Petrocaribe initiative promoted by the Venezuelan leader.

For his part, Chilean Presi-dent Sebastian Pinera quoted Chavez, calling the Celac orga-nization “the second great op-portunity for the construction of the Patria Grande, the unity and the independence of the re-gion”.

“I’m sure that [Chavez] was referring to the first opportu-nity that our founding fathers and liberators had. His vi-sionary commitment to Latin American unity, has, without doubt, been very important for the birth of Celac”, Pinera said of socialist Chavez.

CUBA TAKES THE REINS Cuban head of state Raul Cas-

tro took over the pro tempore presidency of Celac during the summit’s closing last Sunday, strengthening the centrality of the Caribbean Island’s pres-ence in the region’s integration and further isolating the United States from the political trends of Latin America.

“The fact that Cuba is taking over the presidency of Celac marks the change of an era”, said Argentine President Cris-tina Fernandez.

“The fact that Sebastian Pin-era, President of Chile, is hand-ing over the pro tempore presi-dency to Raul Castro of Cuba is an indication of the times”, the Argentine head of state said, praising the tolerance and co-operation that now character-izes the region following the antagonisms of the cold war.

While addressing the sum-mit, the 81 year-old Castro af-firmed the need to maintain the focus of the alliance on stamp-ing out poverty and improving education as a means of achiev-ing development.

“We are obliged to obtain considerable progress regard-ing education as the base of eco-nomic and social development. Nothing that we propose, from reducing inequality and the technology gap, will be possible without it”, Castro said.

Per Celac rules, Cuba will re-tain the one-year presidency of the organization and will pass it to Costa Rica in 2014.

The artillery of ideasFriday, February 1, 2013 | Integration 3

T/ Marianela Jarroud - IPSP/ Presidential Press

Openly conceding the dif-ferences in their ideologi-cal, economic and geo-

political views, leaders and high-level representatives of the 33 member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) committed themselves to inte-gration at their second summit. Celac “definitely” empowers the region’s voice in the world, said the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carib-bean (Eclac), Alicia Barcena, at the conclusion of the summit in Santiago on Monday.

“I am convinced that this new mechanism is a strong signal, first of all, that Latin America and the Caribbean are no lon-ger what they used to be”, and have experienced “very signifi-cant changes”, she said.

Designed in 2010 in Mexico, and created in November 2011 in Caracas, Celac represents about 600 million people and is the first regional bloc in five de-cades that leaves out the United States and Canada and includes Cuba.

Right-wing Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said it is “an inclusive (process), because it

reaffirms convergence in the same common space, while it has projected itself strongly abroad”.

The host president’s words were along similar lines to those written by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, his complete opposite ideologically, in a letter that was read at the summit. Chavez is convalesc-ing in Havana from his fourth cancer operation, which took place on December 11.

The summit was marked by an air of expectancy about the contents of the letter, read out by Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro. Celac “is the most important project of polit-ical, economic, cultural and so-cial unity in our contemporary history”, Chavez said.

The presence from afar of the Venezuelan leader, one of the promotors of Celac togeth-er with then presidents Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) of Mexico and Luis Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) of Brazil, silently stalked the corridors of the summit and breathed suspense even into the meeting that Cel-ac leaders held January 25-26 with the European Union.

“We have every right to feel proud: the nation of republics, as Simon Bolivar the Libera-tor called it, has begun to take

shape as a beautiful and happy reality”, he wrote.

Chavez condemned “the shameful imperial blockade of the revolutionary Cuba of Marti (the Cuban indepen-dence hero and writer)” and “the continued colonization and now the progressive mili-tarization of the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands”, the Brit-ish overseas territory in the South Atlantic that Argentina claims as its own.

He also called for support for Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over the temporary presidency of Celac.

Barcena said, meanwhile, that countries in Latin Ameri-ca and the Caribbean “are in a

better economic situation, are more resilient from the eco-nomic point of view, and also from the social point of view, although there are many pend-ing debts”.

She said the region “is well aware of the gaps that need closing internally, and after-wards, if we are more connect-ed, we will be able to relate to foreign countries with greater strength”.

Barcena said the region has become conscious of the impor-tance of promoting trade be-tween countries.

She added, “If regionalism and integration are dynamized, (production) chains of greater value can be created in the re-gion, and with better articula-tion, we can (enter into more advantageous) relationships with the Asia-Pacific countries, Europe, or the United States”.

The governments represented at the summit reached conver-gence on Argentine sovereign-ty over the Malvinas/Falk-lands Islands, rejection of the US blockade of Cuba, and the need to reduce the enormous inequalities in the region.

But they expressed diver-gence when it came to debate on foreign investments in the region and on historic geopo-litical demands.

Castro said that “transna-tional corporations, primar-ily from North America, will not give up control of energy, water and strategic mineral resources that are becoming scarce”, while he stated that his taking over the Celac pres-idency was “a recognition of

our people’s selfless struggle for independence”.

For his part, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Pa-tino called on the Organiza-tion of American States (OAS) to “make reparations to Cuba”, which was suspended from the body in 1962.

When it was the turn of Bo-livian President Evo Morales, he insisted on his country’s historic demand for a sover-eign outlet to the Pacific Ocean, which it claims from Chile. Pin-era replied, and an extended discussion took place between the two in the forum.

Morales also called on the “brothers” of the insurgent Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) to come to a peace agreement.

They must “understand that in these times, revolu-tions are not made by bullets but by voices, in democracy, without violence, with aware-ness and not by vote-buying”, said Morales, in words that earned him the thanks of Co-lombian President Juan Man-uel Santos.

Barcena said that the coun-tries of the Americas march-ing towards unity in diversity is part of the new impetus that Celac brings. The three reali-ties, made up of the Caribbean and Mexico, Central America and South America, “can dia-logue in a much broader and I would say much more prag-matic environment, each with its own model”, she said.

In her view, “there is more convergence than before, and I would say that the guid-ing principle here is the fight against inequality, because all the countries have realized that inequity conspires against technical progress, security, de-mocracy and, above all, against productivity”.

In contrast, international analyst Raul Söhr held a more cautious and less optimistic view. He said, “integration does not happen because mecha-nisms are created, but because there is political will, and when it comes to that there is still great divergence” within the region.

“The mechanisms keep pro-liferating, with the creation of the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Co-lombia, Mexico and Peru), the Union of South American Na-tions (Unasur), Celac, and the OAS, but at summits like this one, only generic declarations can be made in favor of what is good and against what is bad”, the Chilean expert said.

The third Celac Summit will be held in 2014 in Havana, at a date yet to be announced.

Latin America and Caribbeanaim for “unity in diversity”

The artillery of ideas4 Security | Friday, February 1, 2013

T/ Paul DobsonP/ Agencies

Minister for Interior Af-fairs and Justice, Nestor Reverol, issued a series of

reports this week, which show the government, alongside or-ganized communities, are suc-cessfully combatting the major problem of crime.

Speaking in Altamira, Cara-cas, Minister Reverol said the murder rate is down by 15% across the national territory. The Minister also commented that kidnappings, previously a serious problem based in economic inequalities, are also down. The figures, he ex-plained, go to show that “the supervision, control, and secu-rity measures which are being applied have produced positive results”.

Reverol explained that the Ministry has recently pur-chased 4,000 new motorbikes and 2,000 new walkie-talkies that will be given into the police forces during the first semes-ter of 2013 in order to continue improving the fight against crime.

Crime and criminal culture are problems that the current administration has inherited from the social neglect and high poverty levels of the pre-Chavez governments, and are problems that until now have failed to be successfully addressed by the current government. Last year, the launch of a new social pro-

gram for security ‘A Toda Vida Venezuela’ aimed to finally re-solve one of the most dogged social problems that remains in the country.

The organization, paying, and equipping of police forces is a semi-devolved issue in Venezuela, with individual state governors responsible for their autonomous state police forces. These forces are now being gradually integrated into the recently formed National Bolivarian Police force, which works across the entire nation-al territory, though there has been reluctance by corrupt el-ements within the regional po-lice forces to integrate into this new body.

Reverol revealed priority measures in the two states with

the highest levels of crime this week: Zulia and Miranda.

In Zulia, which borders Co-lombia, the police forces will undergo a process of modern-ization, adaptation, and re-structuring. “We are going to check to see what are the causes which provoke the sensation of insecurity”, explained Zu-lian governor Francisco Arias Cardenas.

In Miranda, which encom-passes parts of greater Ca-racas and has been ruled by right-wing governor Henrique Capriles Radonski since 2008, Minister Reverol unveiled over 2,000 extra security forc-es who, on behalf of the Chavez government, are going to be patrolling and working in the worst hit areas of the state.

The state of Miranda suffers from the most acute crime levels of all of the 23 States in Venezuela.

Reverol went on to explain that the Ministry’s intervention in Miranda was forced upon them by the inaction of the gov-ernor when it comes to dealing with the security issue.

Miranda, Reverol explained, has fallen into a pit of crime and violence with Capriles as governor. Capriles, he stated, “hasn’t, in any concrete way, assumed the issue of citizen’s security”. Furthermore, “the state has a police force which is demoralized and badly equipped; the only equipment which they have is that which we (the National Government) gave to them last year”.

Reverol highlighted certain statistics to back up his claims that governor Capriles is fail-ing in his responsibilities: in 2008 there were 1,477 murders, 1,046 vehicles robberies, and 17 kidnappings in Miranda; yet in 2012, after 4 years of Capriles’ governance, there were 2,576 murders, 4,200 ve-hicles stolen, and 156 kidnap-pings reported.

Reverol explained that in one of the most populated municipalities of Miranda, the Sucre Municipality, “we see that 30% of the murders are concentrated”. Because of this reality, the majority of the 2,000 extra security personnel which the national govern-

ment is sending to Miranda, bypassing the State Governor, will be concentrated in that municipality.

“The Bolivarian Government is committed to the people of Miranda, to guarantee secu-rity in the absence of any plans by the regional government”, he stated. Furthermore, “we are designing a strategic plan which is unique and exclusive to the state, with the aim of guaranteeing the peace and tranquility for those who live in Miranda”.

Minister Reverol also un-veiled the security operation that will take place during the upcoming national holiday to celebrate Carnaval from Feb-ruary 8-13.

He explained that nation-ally, 201,000 security person-nel will take part in the opera-tion, which is 5,000 more than in 2012. Furthermore, there will be 25,000 vehicles used by the security forces, well up on the 9,430 used in 2012. They will be covering the entire country, but especially the 406 beaches and 26 National Parks in Venezuela, favorites of the expected 19.7 million Venezu-elan and foreign holiday goers who will be taking part in the festivities.

“We have determined that thanks to these security per-sonnel, criminal incidents de-creased considerably. This is why we, all of the government, are attending in a direct way this great deployment to guar-antee the peace and tranquility of the Venezuelan families and of the foreign tourists who have chosen our country as their tourist destination”.

GUNS DESTROYEDIn other related news this

week, it was announced that the quantity of firearms de-stroyed by the Armed Forces, who, alongside the National Bo-livarian Police force, are apply-ing the policy of national civil-ian disarmament, has risen to 303,000 since 2003.

Director of the National Bo-livarian Police force, Luis Fer-nandez, explained that “this important figure for the de-struction of firearms puts us at the vanguard of the process in the region”.

“The weapons”, he went on to say, “are being taken out of cir-culation and brought to a place where they will never be able to leave from, where they will never again be able to destroy a human life”. He called on re-gional governments, governors and mayors, to throw them-selves behind this policy for the good of the country.

Reverol: Murders down 15% in Venezuela

The artillery of ideasFriday, February 1, 2013 | Politics 5

T/ COIP/ Ministry of Penitentiary Services

Venezuela’s Minister for Penitentiary Services, Iris Varela, announced the

complete transfer of all inmates incarcerated in the Urbina prison in the state of Lara last weekend after acts of violence led to the death of 57 on Friday.

The relocation is intended to “close this chapter of violence”, Varela said, and entails the tem-porary evacuation of 138 women as well as 111 men, all of whom have been moved to different fa-cilities throughout the region.

Family members of the incar-cerated have been notified of the decision and have been kept informed on the new location of their relatives.

According to Varela, the vio-lence began at Urbina on Friday after private media stations dis-closed information regarding a government inspection of the prison intended to confiscate illegal arms inside the correc-tional facility.

The seizure is part of a cam-paign to disarm the prisons and confront the kind of gang activity that continues to hold a grip on many of the nation’s penitentiaries.

“With absolute rigor, we will carry out the plan to eradicate the mafias inside the peniten-tiary centers. [The prisons] must be ruled by the law and

be spaces for the recovery of people who have had the mis-fortune of falling in to a life of crime and violence”, Varela said on Saturday.

Venezuela’s Ministry for Pen-itentiary Services was created in 2011 to specifically deal with the conditions of the nation’s overcrowded prisons by push-ing for greater efficiency in le-

gal proceedings and a human-ization of the penal system.

Since it’s founding, the minis-try has engaged in a number of reforms including introducing greater rehabilitation programs for inmates, engaging with pris-oners to evaluate problems inside the penitentiaries, and taking a leading role in the construction of more modern facilities.

PRIVATE MEDIA AGENDAMinister Varela condemned

the portrayal of violence in the Urbina prison by the private media, calling the coverage of the acts “biased” and in some cases “fabricated”.

The official pointed specifi-cally to the television station Globovision and the newspaper El Impulso for their sensation-

alist treatment of the violence with aims of sewing “anxiety “ in the population.

“Those who today are clam-oring around the violence are the same who in public and pri-vate, and in social media, have advocated that the ideal policy [for the problem of the prisons] should be the complete exter-mination of the inmates”, the minister accused.

Varela highlighted the use by media outlets of outdated pho-tographs displaying cadavers attributed to the Urbina prison but which were actually taken some six years previously.

Such use of fabricated mate-rials, the minister reminded, is not something new to the pri-vate media.

A similar situation oc-curred in 2011 when Globovi-sion was fined by the national government for violating the nation’s Social Responsibility in the Media Law after vio-lence shook the Rodeo prison in Caracas.

At that time, the opposition news channel aired the testi-mony of inmates’ families 269 times and added the sounds of gunshots in the background for greater effect.

“The way that the media has handled things has been like a macabre party. People act without scruples and it would seem that their thirst for blood is never satiated”, Varela said.

Venezuelan governmentorders evacuation of prison

T/ Ewan RobertsonP/ Presidential Press

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has beaten his re-

spiratory infection and his recovery continues to be fa-vorable, the Venezuelan gov-ernment has reported.

Chavez is in Havana, Cuba, recovering from an operation in the pelvic region last December to remove a cancerous lesion. The operation was his fourth for cancer in eighteen months.

The latest official update on his recovery, released Sat-urday, said, “At present the serious respiratory infection has been overcome, although a certain grade of respiratory insufficiency persists, which is being duly treated”.

The statement also reported that given Chavez’s continued “favorable” clinical progress, “systematic medical treat-ment for the base illness [can-cer] has begun to be applied,

Venezuelan govt: Chavezovercomes respiratory infection

as a compliment to the surgery undergone last 11 December”.

The medical section of the up-date concluded by stating, “The Commander Chavez has been fully complying with medical treatment and has always been active in his process of recov-ery, which has not concluded”.

The statement was read by the Venezuelan Minister of Com-munication, Ernesto Villegas, from Santiago de Chile, where a summit between the European Union (EU) and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) was underway.

Villegas further confirmed in the statement that Chavez has continued to exercise a level of decision-making power while in his process of recovery by re-viewing documents and meeting with leaders of his government.

REACTIONSIn a subsequent interview

with Venezuelan private chan-nel Venevision, Ernesto Ville-

gas stressed that while the posi-tive developments in Chavez’s recovery had “brought happi-ness”, the Venezuelan govern-ment “doesn’t want to create false expectations about [the timing of Chavez’s] return”.

The Venezuelan opposition has maintained a hard line during recent weeks. Many opposition figures argue that there has been a “violation” of the constitution and a “state coup” because Chavez was un-able to attend his presidential swearing-in, even though the Supreme Court had previously ruled that a delay in the cer-emony was legal.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles claimed that the gov-ernment was “shamelessly ly-ing” about Chavez’s health.

In reference to Chavez’s ab-sence from the public light since his operation, the former presidential candidate argued, “Someone can sign documents and make jokes and can’t speak to the country? Someone is ly-ing to you…they [the govern-ment] only care about defend-ing their power”.

The opposition also continues to claim that Venezuela is being “run by Cuba” in the current situation, with leader of the right-wing Popular Will party,

Leopoldo Lopez, declaring yesterday that, “It’s the Cas-tro brothers who are making the decisions in Venezuela”.

Such charges have been strongly rejected by the govern-ment. Vice President Nicolas Maduro declared in a recent in-terview that “we have advised our public continually and truthfully” on Chavez’s state of health, while also respecting his privacy as a patient.

Meanwhile pro-government journalist and political sci-entist Nicmer Evans said in his weekly column today that “the return of Chavez is im-minent, after a highly risky operation and complicated convalescence. This return, still not officially set, could be in no more than four weeks”.

He further argued that while various scenarios are possible upon Chavez’s return, the Bo-livarian process would likely assume “a more shared or col-lective leadership” and that “Chavismo and the Venezuelan people should prepare them-selves for a change in the po-litical dynamic in comparison with the last fourteen years”.

The artillery of ideas6 Culture | Friday, February 1, 2013

T/ Ewan RobertsonP/ Agencies

With community film showings and the open-ing of a new movie the-

ater, this Monday 28 January Venezuela celebrated its Na-tional Day of Cinema.

The day marks 116 years since the first fragments of Venezuelan film were shown in Maracaibo in 1897, and comes as the national film industry is experiencing a renaissance.

According to figures in the Venezuelan film industry, this year between 28 and 30 locally made feature length films will be premiered, an increase on the 20 shown last year and an average of 15 over the last few years.

Jose Antonio Valera, presi-dent of the Venezuelan govern-ment’s division for the promo-tion of national cinema, the Villa del Cine Foundation, said on Monday that so many Ven-ezuelan films had never been premiered in one year.

“We can say that from this week every time a Venezuelan goes to the cinema they will have two or three options from nation-al cinema to choose from, apart from the hegemonic options. This is unique and makes us very hap-py”, he said in an interview with public television VTV.

One of the new Venezuelan movies to be premiered this year is “Breaking the Silence” which deals with structural abuse against disabled people. “The film tries to break the chains of daily abuse”, said di-rector Andres Rodriguez, who added that up to now disabled

people hadn’t played an impor-tant role in national cinema.

Another of the films, pro-duced by the Anaco Audiovi-sual Community, will be the first community-made feature length film in Venezuela.

THE FALL AND RISEOF VENEZUELAN CINEMA

The rise in the quantity and profile of Venezuelan films comes after a spectacular col-lapse in the industry in the 1990s.

In the “golden decade” of the 1980s, a peak was reached in 1986 when over four million people went to see nationally produced films.

Yet in the 1990s, according to national cinema spokesper-sons, a mixture of economic crisis, neoliberal policies and industry instability caused a collapse in Venezuelan cinema. This reached a disastrous low in 1994, when only 77,000 box of-fice seats were filled by national productions.

According to Victor Lucker of the national private distributor Cine Amazonia Films, govern-ments of that period contrib-uted to the decline, as “there weren’t clear policies” towards the industry.

However this trend has been reversed in recent years, in part due to policies adopted by

Venezuelan film industrybeginning to flourish

T/ YVKE MundialP/ Agencies

The president of Venezuela’s National Institute of Statis-

tics (INE), Elías Eljuri, said Tuesday that, by lowering pov-erty, Venezuela has become the country in Latin America with the most equitable distribution of wealth.

In an interview on Union Radio, Eljuri emphasized the current government’s com-mitment to fighting hunger, poverty, and inequality.

“Venezuela has an inequali-ty rate of 0.39, when almost all of the rest of the countries are above 0.45; Brazil and Colom-

Venezuela has the lowestinequality in Latin America

the Chavez government. The re-form to the Cinema Law in 2005 and the establishment of the Fi-nancing and Promotion of Cine-ma Fund boosted the increased production of Venezuelan film and gave a concomitant stabil-ity to the national industry.

Meanwhile the government founded the Villa del Cine in 2006, complimenting the al-ready existing National Auton-omous Centre of Cinematog-raphy (CNAC), to support and directly participate in the pro-duction of Venezuelan film.

These efforts have played a key role in the industry’s current renaissance. Of the 28 – 30 new Venezuelan movies to be shown this year, 22 enjoy the participa-tion of the Villa del Cine.

Villa del Cine president Val-era commented on Monday that, “the fruits of a strong, coherent and sustained policy are being harvested, that aims to make Venezuela a player in the cul-tural and cinematic spheres”.

The Venezuelan government is also in the process of open-ing a network of new cinemas through which both Venezue-lan movies and a range of world film not usually available in

bia are at 0.56, Chile is at 0.52, that means there are countries even with the same rate of ex-treme poverty as Venezuela, but where inequality is much larger”, he said, citing the Gini coefficient which measures in-equality on a scale from 0 to 1.

Eljuri indicated that lowered poverty is a product of govern-ment policies in recent years that have increased the level of social investment.

“More than $500 billion has gone to the social sector”, he said.

That social investment, he noted, was sustained even as Venezuela’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate fell in

2009 and 2010 to 3.5% and 1.2% respectively.

The social sector includes ed-ucation, and schools have been improved dramatically.

“Before there were 350,000 chil-dren that received free meals in schools and now there are 4.1 mil-lion children receiving two meals and a snack each day. They’re also distributing “Canaimita” laptop computers to continue a

program in public elementary schools that is offering impor-tant training to our young peo-ple and allowing them to work at a different level”, he said.

In the second half of 2012, extreme poverty fell to just 6.5% of all households, and for 2013-2019, the goal is to reduce that rate to 3-4%.

Regarding structural pov-erty, which is calculated based on five sets of unsatisfied basic needs regarding housing, edu-cation, and services, Eljuri said that the rate has fallen from 11.36% in 2001 to 6.97% in 2011.

One government program that is helping reduce pov-erty is the Great Housing Mis-sion, which provided homes to 200,080 needy families throughout Venezuela in 2012 alone. Another 300,000 homes are projected to be built and given out in 2013.

commercial cinemas will be shown. Venezuela’s Experi-mental University of the Arts will participate in both the pro-gramming and policies of this alternative cinema network.

Due to greater industry stabil-ity and the establishment of a new worker’s fund, film industry workers also enjoy greater labor benefits than before, said Victor Lucker, such as social insurance and vacation plans for kids.

Along with the greater number of movies being produced, box of-fice figures for national cinema have also shown a resurgence. In 2012 over two million Venezu-elans went to see nationally pro-duced titles, not counting street projections and attendance at community theatres.

As the popularity of Venezu-elan cinema seems set to con-tinue rising, government and industry figures are also look-ing to make a larger regional and global impact.

“We live in a moment of splen-dor for [Venezuelan] cinema that obliges us to be ever bet-ter…and to grow in this sense. We have a great commitment with the audience we’ve recov-ered”, said Lucker.

The artillery of ideas Friday, February 1, 2013 | Economy 7

Venezuela strengthens foreignreserves, gold mining

T/ COIP/ Pdvsa

Venezuelan Oil and Mining Minister, Rafael Ramirez, announced the restructur-

ing of the state oil company, PD-VSA’s, contribution of foreign exchange to the national bank last Monday and reported that the public firm will also be tak-ing over the country’s gold min-ing operations.

Ramirez, who is also Presi-dent of Pdvsa, made the an-nouncements during a televised broadcast on the state television channel VTV, explaining that he had met with Venezuelan head of state Hugo Chavez in Cuba to inform the convalesc-ing leader of the proposals.

Chavez, the Minister af-firmed, has signed off on the changes that will involve an in-creased amount of Pdvsa’s for-eign exchange being directed to Venezuela’s Central Bank in order to relieve speculative pressures as a result of a rising demand for US dollars.

The sale of the foreign ex-change will translate to an increase of $2.4 billion in the bank’s reserves but will be ac-companied by a reduction of $2.9 billion in Pdvsa’s contribu-tion to the country’s National Development Fund (Fonden), a

financing body used for a vari-ety of social programs.

Over the past 10 years, PD-VSA has provided Fonden with over $59 billion.

To facilitate the modifica-tions, the Venezuelan congress must ratify a reform to the country’s hydrocarbon law which details the allocation of oil profits when those revenues exceed the prices stipulated in the fiscal budget.

As it stands, the South Amer-ican nation’s budget has been calculated on a $55 barrel or oil while the current market for Venezuelan crude is over $100.

During his presentation, Ramirez additionally discarded the possibility of making avail-able new bonds on behalf of the state oil company, something that marks a break with past debt policy.

“We are not going to emit any bonds and, above all, we are not going to continue contract-ing debt in dollars. This is not planned”, he said.

DEVELOPMENT OF GOLD SECTORAddressing the press, Ramir-

ez announced the creation of a new firm, the Venezuelan Min-ing Corporation, a subsidiary of Pdvsa that will take control of gold exploitation in the Southern Orinoco region of the country.

The initiative follows a law passed in 2011 that grants the Venezuelan government the right to manage the gold min-ing industry throughout the national territory.

According to officials, the law was passed to put a halt to the anarchy that has reined in the mining sector where il-legal activity has damaged the environment, put workers at risk and stripped the country of strategic resources.

“This measure will allow us to delimit the [mining] ar-eas in order to increase gold exploitation and avoid con-traband. It will also allow us to bring order to a sector that was in the hands of private in-terests who have made great fortunes off the market with-out exploiting the resources”, Ramirez said.

Venezuela currently owns gold reserves totaling 133 mil-lion ounces.

As part of a move to insulate the nation from the European economic crisis, the Chavez administration began a repa-triation of the nation’s reserves held in foreign banks in 2011.

Approximately 160 tons of the precious metal were brought back to the OPEC member state in a process that ended in Janu-ary 2012.

T/ AgenciesP/ Presidential Press

Rosneft’s investment in the current projects in Ven-

ezuela will total $10 billion, the Russian state-owned oil company’s president, Igor Sechin, said Wednesday. Sechin met with several high level members of the Venezu-elan government, including Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez and Vice President Nicolas Maduro. In the meeting with Maduro, Sechin presented a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed to President Hugo Chavez, wish-ing him a full recovery from the cancer surgery he under-went in December.

Vice President Maduro thanked the Russian del-egation for visiting Venezu-ela, affirming, “This visit is timely, and very useful for the interests of our common development and has been very beautiful from a spiri-tual point of view”. Maduro showed the press the letter sent from Putin to President Chavez.

“The letter summarizes the love felt by the Russian people for an extraordinary man born in this land”, he ex-claimed.

In declarations to the press, Sechin said it was his “honor to bring the missive from President Putin to Vice Presi-dent Nicolas Maduro” and he underlined that in Russia, “President Hugo Chavez is deeply respected and loved”.

Russia’s share in oil indus-try production will amount to 15 million metric tons an-nually. Russian companies currently take part in five production projects in Ven-

Russia to invest big in Venezuela,Putin sends Chavez letter

ezuela, including the Junin-6 and Carabobo-2 oil blocks.

Rosneft said Tuesday it will lead the Russian consortium that runs Junin-6, a project developed jointly with Vene-zuela’s state energy monopoly Pdvsa.

Rosneft said earlier in January it has signed a deal to acquire private oil firm Surgutneftegas’s stake in the National Oil Consortium de-veloping the Junin-6 oil field. The deal was signed during a meeting between Sechin and Surgutneftegas head Vladi-mir Bogdanov in Moscow on January 25.

Before the deal, the National Oil Consortium comprised Rus-sia’s large oil companies Gaz-prom Neft, Rosneft, TNK-BP, Surgutneftegas and LUKoil, each holding equal stakes.

Surgutneftegas announced in November 2012 that it planned to sell its stake in the consortium. There were re-ports that TNK-BP might also quit the project.

The National Oil Consor-tium holds a 40 percent in-terest in the Junin-6 project while Venezuela’s state oil and gas company Pdsva owns 60 percent.

The 447.85 square kilome-ter Junin-6 block is located in the Orinoco Belt, and has geological reserves of 52.6 bil-lion barrels of oil, with 10.96 billion barrels of recoverable reserves.

Total development costs for Junin-6 are estimated at near-ly $25 billion. At peak produc-tion, the field is expected to produce up to 450,000 barrels per day (about 22.5 million tons of oil per year), accord-ing to information on the Gaz-prom Neft website.

Venezuela’s poverty reduction, real (inflation-adjusted) income growth, and other basic data in the Chavez era are not in dispute among experts, including inter-national statistical agencies such as the World Bank or UN. Even opposition economists use the same data in making their case against the government. It is only journalists like Ander-son who avoid letting commonly agreed upon facts and numbers get in the way of their story.

Anderson devotes many thou-sands of words, in one of the US leading literary magazines, to portraying the dark underside of life in Venezuela - ex-cons and squatters, horrible prisons: “A thick black line of human excre-ment ran down an exterior wall,

and in the yard below was a sea of sludge and garbage several feet deep”. He draws on more than a decade of visits to Venezuela to shower the reader with his most foul memories of the society and the government. The article is accompanied by a series of grim, depressing black-and-white pho-tos of unhappy-looking people in ugly surroundings.

I am all in favor of journalism that exposes the worst aspects of any society. But what makes this piece just another cheap political hack job is the conclusions that the author draws from his nar-row, intentionally chosen slice of Venezuelan reality. For example:

They [Venezuelans] are the victims of their affection for a charismatic man... After nearly

This is especially true for Jon Lee Anderson, writing in the January 28 issue of the New Yorker (“Slumlord: What has Hugo Chavez wrought in Venezuela?”). He mentions in passing that “the poorest Ven-ezuelans are marginally better off these days”. Marginally? From 2004-2011, extreme pov-erty was reduced by about two-thirds. Poverty was reduced by about one-half. And this measures only cash income. It does not count the access to health care that millions now have, or the doubling of college enrollment - with free tuition for many. Access to public pen-sions tripled. Unemployment is half of what it was when Chavez took office.

Editor-in-Chief Graphic Design Pablo Valduciel L. - Aimara Aguilera

INTERNATIONAL Friday, February 1, 2013 | Nº 144 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve

Media hate fest for Venezuelakeeps on keepin’ on

Opinion

T/ Mark Weisbrot

Last week there was a real media hate-fest for Venezue-lan President Hugo Chavez,

with some of the more influen-tial publications on both sides of the Atlantic really hating on the guy. Even by the hate-filled stan-dards to which we have become accustomed, it was impressive.

It’s interesting, since this is one of the only countries in the world where the reporting of the more liberal media - NPR or even the New Yorker - is hardly different from that of Fox News or other right-wing media.

The funniest episode came from El Pais, which on Thurs-day ran a front page picture of a man that they claimed was Chavez, lying on his back in a hospital bed, looking pretty messed-up with tubes in his mouth. The picture was soon revealed as completely fake. The paper, which is Spain’s most in-fluential publication (and with a lot of clout in Latin America, too), had to pull its newspapers off the stands and issue a public apology. Although, as the Ven-ezuelans complained, there was no apology to Chavez or his fam-ily. Not surprisingly, since El Pais really hates Chavez.

The New York Times, for its part, ran yet another hate piece on its op-ed page. Nothing new here, they have doing this for almost 14 years - most recently just three months ago. This one was remarkably unoriginal, comparing the Chavez govern-ment to a Latin American magi-cal realist novel. It contained very little information - but being fact-free allowed the au-thors to claim that the country had “dwindling productivity” and “an enormous foreign debt load”. Productivity has not “dwindled” under Chavez; in fact real GDP per capita, which is mostly driven by productivity growth, expanded by 24 percent since 2004. In the 20 years prior to Chavez, real GDP per person actually fell. As for the “enor-mous foreign debt load”, Ven-ezuela’s foreign public debt is about 28 percent of GDP, and the interest on it is about 2 percent of GDP. If this is enormous - well let’s just say these people don’t have a good sense of quantity.

The authors were probably just following a general rule, which is that you can say almost anything you want about Ven-ezuela, so long as it is bad - and it usually goes unquestioned. Sta-tistics and data count for very little when the media is present-ing its ugly picture.

a generation, Chavez leaves his countrymen with many unan-swered questions, but only one certainty: the revolution that he tried to bring about never really took place. It began with Chavez, and with him, most likely it will end.

Really? It sure doesn’t look that way. Even Chavez’s oppo-nent in the October presidential election, Henrique Capriles had to promise voters that he would preserve and actually expand the Chavez-era social programs that had increased Venezuelans’ access to health care and educa-tion. And after Chavez beat him by a wide margin of eleven per-centage points, Chavez’s party increased its share of governor-ships from 15 to 20 of 23 states, in the December elections that fol-lowed. In those elections, Chavez was not even in the country.

But it’s the one-sidedness of the New Yorker’s reporting that is most overwhelming. Imagine, for example, writing an article about the United States at the end of President Clinton’s eight years - interviewing the home-less and the destitute, the people tortured in our prisons, the un-employed and the poor single mothers struggling to feed their children. Could you get away with pretending that this is all of “What Clinton has wrought in America?” Without men-tioning that unemployment hit record lows not seen since the 1960s, that poverty was sharply reduced, that it was the longest-running business cycle expan-sion in US history?

As for the media, it is a re-markable phenomenon, this out-pouring of animosity towards Chavez and his government, from across the western media spectrum. How is it that this democratically elected Presi-dent who hasn’t killed anyone or invaded any countries gets more bad press than Saddam Hussein did (aside from the months im-mediately preceding invasions of Iraq)? Even when he is fight-ing for his own life?

The western media reporting has been effective. It has con-vinced most people outside of Venezuela that the country is run by some kind of dictatorship that has ruined it. Fortunately for Venezuelans, they have ac-cess to more information about their country than the foreign-ers who are relying on one-sided and often inaccurate media. So they keep re-electing the Presi-dent and the party that has im-proved their lives - much to the annoyance of the major media and its friends.