Last month, the president issued Decree 1011, creating a corps of ``itinerant inspectors'' empowered to close schools and fire teachers that don't follow government-set procedures and standards. ``Political commissars,'' Agudo called them. Jaime Manzo, head of the national teachers' union, called it ``a sword hanging over the head of any teacher who refuses to sing Chávez's praises in the classroom.''
Parents' groups and the teachers' union have appealed to the Supreme Court to block the decree and submitted to the assembly an alternate education reform plan that guarantees a ``pluralist education'' and bans ``partisan politics'' from the classroom. New history texts for fourth- and sixth-graders published in 1999 praised Chávez's coup attempt and branded as ``corrupt oligarchies'' the two parties that ruled Venezuela since the late 1950s, Democratic Action and COPEI.
Chávez has also greatly expanded a system of paramilitary classes in public high schools that had long been on the books but were seldom held, portraying them as ``the founding stones of the new Venezuelan man.'' ``He is promoting militarism, infecting texts with viruses that foster class hatreds ... and speak against globalization and privatization,'' Raffalli said in an interview.
Chávez recently signed a deal with Cuba under which Havana will train Venezuelan teachers and provide educational materials, and Education Minister Hector Navarro last year approved a nationwide essay competition on the life of Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ``Ché'' Guevara.***
August 2001 - It's Cool to be Communist Again***Inspired by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba's Fidel Castro, military strongman Chavez is turning oil-rich Venezuela into a populist, anti-U.S. dictatorship, say U.S. intelligence sources. They tell Insight that Chavez is providing a safe haven for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) narcoguerrillas, an 18,000-man insurgency that began decades ago as an offshoot of the local Communist Party and still clings to Marxist-Leninist ideology." ***
A supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds up a copy of the national constitution in Caracas, Venezuela, during a rally April 19, 2002. With much the same energy shown during Mao Tse Tung's "Cultural Revolution" of the 1960s, some Venezuelans still pursue a "Bolivarian Revolution" based on the beliefs of a 19th-century patriot as filtered through the mind of President Hugo Chavez. Its nationalist ideals offer militant Chavez followers an element of racial and class redemption in a country long dominated by a mostly white elite. But some say that since Chavez took office three years ago, the revolution has become less a matter of ideology than of power.(AP Photo/Douglas Engle) - Apr 24 9:50 PM ET
December 2001 - Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela "experiments in social justice"***Chavez and his crew are taking on the inequities in Venezuela's system. With 80% of the population living in poverty, that's no small feat. Richard Gott's book is one of the only places readers concerned with social justice can find out about the hopeful experiments underway in Venezuela.***