Coral Wynter

  • Challenges for Venezuela's revolution

    Michael Lebowitz is a director of the Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM), a Caracas-based foundation for analysis and discussion of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution; professor emeritus of the department of economics at Simon Fraser University, Canada; and author of several books on Marxism and socialism, including his newly published Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century. He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Coral Wynter and Jim McIlroy about the unfolding revolution in Venezuela.

  • Controversy over Venezuelan mine killings

    Six miners were killed by the Special Operations Unit of the Venezuelan Armed Forces (TO5) on September 22 in the remote jungle area of La Paragua, 200km south-east of Ciudud Bolivar in the eastern state of Bolivar. Fourteen soldiers landed their helicopter at the El Papelon de Turumban mine, destroyed the miners’ heavy machinery and shot them in the back, according to a report in the October 8 Ultimas Noticias.

  • New steps forward for education

    “We guarantee that all Venezuelans will receive free education, to the highest level, as a promise of the revolutionary government. This [event] demonstrates the importance that the [Bolivarian] revolution gives to education”, Hugo Chavez declared on October 8. The Venezuelan president was officially re-opening the Andres Bello high school, situated in the metropolitan centre of the Caracas. The high school has been extensively renovated and upgraded to provide for a student population of 1700, the October 9 Ultimas Noticias reported.

  • A Bolivarian railway

    Thousands of people flocked to the La Rinconada area, south of Caracas, on October 15, to hear socialist President Hugo Chavez inaugurate the new “Ezequiel Zamora” train line from Caracas to Cua, in the Valles del Tuy — the first new above-ground train line constructed in Venezuela for more than 70 years.

  • Indigenous resistance celebrated

    October 12 was marked in Venezuela as the “Day of Indigenous Resistance” to the arrival of Spanish colonisers. On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus first landed in South America, beginning more than 500 years of genocide and oppression of the continent’s indigenous inhabitants. The day is a national public holiday in Venezuela and was previously designated Christopher Columbus Day.

  • Celebrating five years of the women's bank

    On September 12 Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez announced the expansion of the Development Bank for Women — Banmujer — during a meeting in the Teresa Carreno Theatre to celebrate five years since the bank’s founding. Chavez offered another 100 billion bolivares (A$65 million) in resources to the bank.

  • VENEZUELA: Congress discusses indigenous rights

    Around 450 delegates from some 35 indigenous communities, representing more than 500,000 people across Venezuela, met on March 24-26 for the Fifth National Congress of Indigenous Peoples.

  • Venezuela: 'Another television is possible'

    Jim McIlroy &Coral Wynter, Caracas On February 2, the Latin American TV channel Telesur and the Arabic channel Al Jazeera signed an agreement to exchange information and technology, formalising a growing link that was initiated when Telesur began

  • A wake for the Brisbane Resistance Centre

    A wake for the Brisbane Resistance CentreBRISBANE — On April 1, Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and Resistance members and supporters held a wake for the Resistance Centre in Terrace Street, New Farm, in which the

  • Free bus rides will reduce car use

    Free bus rides will reduce car useA national survey of car drivers has shown that the private use of cars is increasing at an alarming rate. At the same time, drivers are even less inclined to use public transport, and general