Greetings, friends.

My name is Jessa McLean, and I'm

here to provide you with some

blueprints of disruption.

This weekly podcast is dedicated

to amplifying the work of activists,

examining power structures

and sharing the success stories from

the grassroots.

Through these discussions, we hope

to provide folks with the tools and

the inspiration they need to start

to dismantle capitalism, decolonize

our spaces, and bring about the

political revolution we

know we need.

Quite often on blueprints.

We talk about the limitations of

Canadian electoral politics, of

of liberal democracies.

And with all the issues we've raised

so far and all the inequities,

we still haven't even touched on.

I think it's easy to realize the

level of change we need will require

something we've just never seen here

in Canada.

The big question is always, how do

we get there?

Right now, consensus seems to be

that the socioeconomic conditions,

the political atmosphere in Canada

isn't at the point it needs

to be. In truth, Canada

has not seen the level of political

engagement and collective

mindset required to push

outside these confines of

our so-called democracy.

You know, outside of what we think

is possible.

So it's been a long time

since the working class have made

any significant gains.

In our last interview, John Clarke

reminded us that the courage to

meaningfully disrupt the system must

come from the base,

from the rank and file.

We've acknowledged many times on

here that the need to have organized

labor work hand in hand with social

movements, to mobilize

the population so we can activate

that collective power we keep

talking about.

That's true.

If we keep looking to Canadian

examples, we are going to have a

hard time building something new.

We are likely doomed to just keep

repeating the same patterns, working

within the same confines.

But if we look outside this

very limited scope.

If we examine movements

which have been successful,

we can start to make

the necessary foundations for

that revolution.

So in this episode, we are going to

look at South American social

movements, a cursory

look that honestly ends up asking

more questions than it answers.

But this is a good thing because

we are going to use this episode

as well as some of the other themes

that have been a constant in

our work here as a launch

point for a miniseries to start

this larger discussion.

Santiago and I talked to Alexander

Moldovan about his recent experience

studying social movements while in

Venezuela.

He shares some inspiring stories

of resistance and solidarity

as well as historical context,

to help put it all in perspective.

The North and South American

experiences certainly have

their differences.

We recognize that, but there are so

many parallels as well,

and even more lessons to be learned.

So we're excited at the idea of

exploring this further with you, the

audience.

If you'd like to support us as

we expand their content, our work,

please consider becoming a patron of

the show.

As we go through the interview,

you'll actually hear Santiago and I

come to the realization that our

work here drawing lessons from

the South American experience is far

from done.

So you can also help us by listening

in as we start this discussion

and share with us any themes

or questions you'd like us to

explore moving forward.

Here's our interview with Alex.

Okay, welcome.

Alex.

Can you please introduce yourself

for the audience?

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Jessa and Santiago.

My name is Alexander Moldovan.

My pronouns are he him.

So I'm a Ph.D.

student at York University in the

Department of Politics.

I study kind of the link between

social movements, insecurity

and self-defense.

I've been looking at this for

several years.

I've just come back from fieldwork

in Venezuela, where

I had the chance really to learn

over the course of about two months

from movements kind of down there,

organizations and committees that

are formed to free and

imprisoned workers, farmers

who are trying to feed cities.

And one of the worst

kind of situations of food

insecurity in the hemisphere

and workers who have taken over

their factories.

Although like my background is

European, I was born and raised here

in Canada.

You know, I strive to learn from

from movements abroad.

And let's face it, I mean, Canadian

politics tends to be a bit boring.

We joke that it's cold up here and

nothing happens.

But, you

know, we've we've seen titanic

shifts in our political landscape,

you know, an almost attempted, I

guess, move to overthrow

the governments and earlier this

year that we're hearing the inquiry

about very recently.

So there's there's certain things

that I feel that we can definitely

learn from the Venezuelan

experience.

Pushing back against the far right.

That's definitely a useful tool.

And it's

what you said is kind of in part why

we called you on to blueprints

when you mentioned that you had been

studying social movements

in South America.

It seemed like a perfect time to

talk about it because a lot of our

episodes have been with

the frustration in Canadian

politics, the stagnation

on the left.

You're talking about movements on

the right. You know, that's not much

to get excited about.

But I understand what you're you're

talking about, like a need for

for mobilization.

But hopefully through this

discussion, I'm hoping.

To learn a lot because

when we were talking to Dimitri

LASCARIS. Right, Santiago's here

with us today because

he's got a lot of value to add

to this conversation as well.

So, yeah, I'm hoping to soak up

a lot of knowledge for you from

the both of you,

but also as a broader

movement here in Canadian activism

on any parallels

that you could draw or

lessons that we can learn

as activists on how to

make way to use social movements

to make way for actual progressive

government.

Because I think a lot of people

right now are at a loss.

Without a political home, we've

talked about this a lot on

blueprints and our encouragement has

for folks to take up activism

and to do mutual aid

and things in their community to

help push their neighbors left, you

know, to kind of put it roughly.

But we're not there yet.

Right. We're definitely not there

yet. I don't feel like we could

activate civil society in

the same way in South America.

But maybe maybe

you're going to give us a little bit

of hope there, Alex, because you

sounded a little hopeful there in

your intro.

Santiago, what do you hope to get

out of this conversation?

Well, for me, the way

I see it right now,

the whole world,

you're seeing a push to the right.

You know, you're seeing far

right movements grow in Canada,

the United States, Italy elected a

fascist government.

You have all

over Europe. The far right is

gaining more and more traction.

Really, there's not been a lot

of victories for the left.

And then I look at Latin America

and I see

the opposite story.

Right? We're living pink tide

part two. You know, a country

like Colombia, my home country where

I was born, which had never

elected anybody even remotely

close to being a leftist

that had been one of the strongest

allies of the United States in Latin

America.

That has,

to this day, the most U.S.

bases in the continent.

That has

been a brutally violent

place for leftists to

organize, elected

its first leftist president.

That is a strong

contrast to what we're seeing here.

And I guess for me,

being having lived in Canada

so long now and doing all of

my activism in Canada,

I want to figure out, you know, what

is it that they're doing right

there? What is it?

How are these movements being formed

when so many of us are talking, for

example, about writing off electoral

ism here, about exploring avenues

outside of electoral ism?

How is it that they're finding

victories through electoral ism?

How is it that they're finding

victories outside of it as well?

Because there's a lot of organizing

going on outside of that.

I don't necessarily have the

answers, but and I don't even know

if we can even.

Maybe Alex has all the answers about

why we brought them here.

Oh, God, no.

No pressure.

But that is a conversation I think,

that we have to start having.

Right.

And it's worth learning because, I

mean, they're doing something.

You know, something's going well.

No, certainly.

I mean, like, when you look here,

there's a huge and wide disconnect

between what movements are doing

and then what the electoral vehicle

of the left kind of says and

wants to even do.

It almost seems like the NDP just

doesn't want to take power, doesn't

want to have power in its hands.

But we understand that this is this

is fundamentally important.

And we could actually bring about,

like, positive social change

and make this this country,

you know, govern for

working people instead of on their

backs. Right.

But I think just to touch upon

what we were talking about in

Colombia, we can't look

at Petro's election

and this kind of this the sweep of

left in Latin America without the

movements of

a year prior to the election, there

was this national strike that really

energized a lot of poor working

class and young Colombians and got

them involved in real social

struggle like people are.

We're fighting police officers, riot

police in the streets.

And it was quite widespread

in multiple cities.

People were actually fighting back

against COVID lockdowns

and against wage suppression, things

like this.

So we need to be able to actually

tap into these movements, to be able

to elect

people like Pedro,

at least here in Canada.

You know, we can draw some sort of

parallel to that.

But contextually, I really want to

say Venezuela is very

different from Colombia and from

Chile and even from Mexico

since 2014 with I guess

with the death of Chavez and the

drastic decline in the price of oil

and, you know, a very coordinated

campaign of sanctions from

the US, the EU and Canada,

the country is very much suffering.

Some of the stories that people were

telling me or like, you know, for

for several for several months, we

could only buy like things that were

produced here. So like coffee,

mangos and maybe rubber,

they couldn't imports, commodities,

basic things to kind of get by.

Some refugee agencies estimate

the number of Venezuelans who have

left to be somewhere between 5

to 7 million.

And that's that's a lot of people.

This isn't like just the rich

and, you know, white collar

professionals fleeing the country.

This is people from very poor

neighborhoods saying, I can't make a

living here and I have to leave

to be able to find a job and support

my family.

And it's to some degree, it's it's

kind of ironic, like the federal

government has kind of really lasted

all these sanctions, like the Lima

Group, which is an organization that

that Canada has an informal

organization of states in the

Western Hemisphere

was formed right before this thing

tied part to with when all these

right wing governments were were

running countries from, you know,

Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

And they started to bring together

condemnation.

So forwarding

cases to the International Criminal

Court.

So a case against Venezuela, Canada

is a signatory to this.

They tried to adopt diplomatic

pressure and economic

pressure, of course, with sanctions.

Today, the Lima Group really doesn't

function anymore.

Other Latin American countries that

signed on now have left this

president that really have no

concern for putting sanctions

on Maduro.

So, you know, while the government

has very much kind of

survives in a very,

you know, dire economic state,

it has this kind of wherewithal and

tenacity, but it's

also turned to some degree very,

very repressive against working

people, like when

during the national strike,

people were comparing, like the

repression the military in Colombia

was using to the

like in Venezuela, it's called the

operation Operation Liberate

the People of Peace.

And these are these are massive

human rights infringements where a

militarized riot police would enter

poor neighborhoods and just kind of

spray bullets everywhere

they were. They would kill you,

would plant guns on their bodies,

very dirty stuff.

And, you know, the government came

out, I think, in 2019

saying the policies were a mistake

that we've killed up to and they

estimate 7000 people.

So the situation I saw in Venezuela

was it

is hard to compare to

another country in Latin America,

even to try to compare to a country

that's not in a state of war.

And to be honest, just the level of

of the poverty.

But, you know, fixing that context,

I visited in spring

2022, and this was the first

year of like positive growth

that Venezuelans have seen since

2014.

So I guess the short lesson

here, the quick lesson I want to get

out is when you elect a leftist

government, you have to be willing

to fight because there will be

pressure on on the government,

on the social movements, on the

people that actually benefit from

government policies.

And it's really Venezuela has been

punished for for daring to stand up.

So how are social movements

responding to these

conditions?

Because when I think of South

American social movements, I think

of them, I guess was.

Any country

being either on the offense or

on the defense.

And typically, when you're

successful in electing

a progressive government,

you can start to refocus

your energies rather than

constantly fighting back.

But this seems to be a very unique

situation in Venezuela where.

Yeah.

How are they responding?

So, no, that's a great question.

I think the the one of the

like one of the organizations

that I spoke to

that actually has a lot of relevance

for for what we see here in Canada,

especially with like the

industrialization.

You know, you see it in Hamilton,

you see it in small towns all around

Ontario. Just the town

factory leaves

and gets converted into a bunch of

call centers.

And people have to kind of grapple

with this this change into the

service sector.

I visited a city called Frederick

Does, and it's in both of our states

very, very much in the interior of

the country, in the Amazon.

And the city was designed in the

fifties to export raw materials

with light processing and send it

out to the world market.

So it's one of the most factory

dense parts of the country country.

But during the crisis,

a series of factory factory owners

would would just abandon their

plants.

Would seek to kind of strip the

plants of their like machines

and sell it for parts, whatever they

had. And this isn't in part

due to government policy, like

the government was trying to

institute wage reforms,

like increase the minimum wage,

have longer times for poor parental

leaves, basic things like this.

The government attempted to pass

some of these wage reforms during

like in the middle of this crisis.

And at that point, a few of the

bosses tried to leave.

Now, workers themselves

actually ended up blockading their

factories.

So there's this one great piece

on Venezuela analysis.

I met some of these workers, but

Sarah Pascall and Martina and Chris

Gilbert's two

contributors to Venezuela analysis

professors at

the Boulevard University in Caracas

and sat down and interviewed these

workers and talked to them about

their first experiences,

kind of with these like

rapid changes to the standard of

living and the prospect of the boss

leaving the plant.

And these workers said, you know, at

first we tried to form a union.

We tried to unionize and

actually kind of just institute wage

demands.

But then when we saw the boss was

actually trying to sell the

the factory for scraps, the factory

we've worked out for 40, 50

years, some of us, we blockaded

the factory and we stopped the

movement out of of goods.

And they did this in in Dhaka,

like a steel production plant that

services like the oil

industry.

They they held the perimeter

for two years and having

24 hour watches, they slept

in the bushes. They had iguanas.

Some of their their members

went out and got jobs in other

plants so they could still fund the

blockade of this plant.

And after about two years,

they applied to have it

expropriated.

This didn't work.

The government was really not

willing to expropriate the plants.

So they have a very different

set of property laws than than we

have in Canada.

But they ended up applying

for a specific title for the factory

to be a social property enterprise,

and it allowed the workers to

form a mixed commission with the

boss. So there would be two

representatives from the workers and

one from the boss, and they would

run the plants.

Now, in the case of India worker,

the bosses didn't want to

participate.

So the governments, according to the

law, gave the third position to the

workers. So the workers elected

their own managers and restarted

production themselves, and

they're actually still operating

today. So I think they seized the

plant finally in 2019,

and they're fulfilling service

contracts and they're going forward

now. Workers from like and this is

like I've been to picket lines in

Canada where this has happened,

where the bosses removed

the machinery. This happened at GM

and Oshawa.

There's US steel plants in Hamilton

that have been on strike like this

for almost a decade.

Really.

So I think that's a core lesson

here. Like we actually like it for

taking industrial action.

We have to get to the point of,

okay, we can't let the boss take

away the means of production from

the factories themselves or else

we're going to be guaranteed out of

jobs. They're not going to bring

this stuff back.

That's just the obvious truth.

And in this case of in Endora,

there were they were very aware of

this. But these workers went on

to join up with two other

occupied factories.

One is called there is so it's a

factory seized from a French

conglomerate.

And

they they with these factories,

they formed an organization called

the Productive Workers Army.

And it's a very new organization.

And they go around to different

social movements and

what we call communes in Venezuela,

other kind of collective

organizations that kind of

have their own democratic

structures, have assemblies,

and they actually control

production.

A lot of communes are based in like

the countryside.

So I'm based in small towns and

more or less village communities.

So they go to these communes

and they actually build infrastructure

for them to

be able to like produce goods.

So like coffee

grinding machines for, for communal

grows, working with in

the coffee sector, for instance,

which I tend to rent

as my academic way.

I'm sitting here wondering what the

response would be should

that have been tried at the GM

plant?

And I know you talked about like

property laws being different,

but I can only imagine

that would not last two years.

Like we would see police

intervention.

And I'm just so used to

blockades and movements being

thwarted by injunctions,

simple injunctions.

So.

How do we get from that

where we are now to that far more

militant approach to.

Individual workplaces.

And to be clear, they were

non-unionized.

They it was a it was an interesting

situation. They had a union, but it

was more of a yellow union.

So it was really in the pocket of

management. And they really felt

that, you know, the state and the

bosses were kind of working against

them in that respect.

Like their union officials

would really kind of have these

backdoor meetings with with the

employer.

So they were trying to actually

escape the one union they had

in in Dwarka and move

into a more autonomous union where

they had more control of the

situation.

But I think that.

That's a whole other conversation as

well. Right, because a lot of.

I'm trying to simplify it a little

because the the politics

gets a little thick or can get a

little thick and.

Because yeah. Just opens up all

these other questions that I have

to our labor movement and

alternatives because quite often

folks here use the

traditional avenues, right?

Get elected a delegate

run for office, take over

the union, you know, or

mobilize the rank and file to

do something similar, like put

pressure through those same simple

systems.

But what you're describing is,

again, just so unique to what

I thought was possible, I guess

I'm so stuck in in

this kind of Canadian perspective,

I think.

Santiago, like, what do you feel?

Yeah, just thinking.

Like, I'm also contrasting

with how militant

unions across Latin America

have played such an influential

role.

Like the national thing I started

thinking about was, you know,

in in Bolivia

after

the coup against Evo Morales,

it was the unions

that led to the rebuilding

of the movement that then

got the Movimiento

Socialism Party elected

again afterwards and how involved

the unions were in resisting against

the authoritarian regime that had

been created. Right.

And this seems to be

something that's quite common across

Latin America, which is

that organized

militant labor is at the center

of so many struggles.

Though, certainly, I mean, like

this, cases in Argentina where

people were doing the exact same

thing that I saw in Venezuela,

seizing their factories, this is it.

Like, you know, in the early 2000s

with the really like

frontal attacks of neoliberalism

against, you know, what was barely a

welfare state in Argentina.

But I think like one of the some

of the deficiencies we have, I mean,

like I guess to contextualize our

experience, it's even a little more

there's a very healthy skepticism

among working class people of of

trade union leadership and political

leadership.

And I think that's when we buy into

like, oh, yeah, let's do the

delegate thing. And then we actually

see from being a delegates the

limits of what you can do.

I think the next step and what

I saw with what they were doing

was screw, screw this

apparatus that you have that I can't

actually do anything positive for

people and I'm going to try to do

my own thing.

And in their case, they.

Our own thing.

Our own thing.

Exactly.

They were trying to do it, you know,

our own thing.

But you know, there are difficulties

and I guess to contextualize this a

bit more like in Puerto,

it does in 2000.

Since the beginning of the

Bolivarian Movement has elected

Chavista representatives

to the National Assembly and also to

the state governor government.

Now, in 2008, there was a

huge kind of eruption of open

labor struggle.

And the governor of believe our

state had actually called me the

military, sort of the National

Guard, to contain the protesters

of workers.

Now, at a at the home of this

demonstration, where all the union

leaders, you know, same thing in

Canada, when you go to like a Labor

Day parade, the union leaderships at

the front, the National Guard,

opened fire with live ammunition

against these union leaders.

And this is like the Bolivarian

government doing it against, you

know, their their own kind of

people, or at least the Bolivarian

governor.

After this, immediately after Chavez

expropriated the steel sector and

brought it under state control, he

realized, he said, like, look, the

governor clearly screwed up and

pushing forward

with repression.

Chavez, in response to

kind of this violence against

working class people, kind of caved

in to their demands, immediately

expropriated the sector

and kind of.

It really allowed a more kind of

state centric planning

of production to kind of occur in

the steel sector at that point.

But the government has not always

been on the working classes side

and the union bureaucrats as well.

So there's an incredible

amount of understanding that, like

our organizations that we see right

now are not going to be there

without us and we can

easily brush them to the side if

need be.

Now, this is a little harder said

than done, kind

of given the context, but overall

there was the you know, despite

the amount of kind of like poverty,

the odds against them, like

the workers in these occupied

factories are blacklisted.

Like they have trouble finding

supplies. They have trouble finding

contracts because what kind

of capitalist wants to actually deal

with these kinds of plants?

Who who would really want to

encourage this? This is a very

dangerous example for other

people.

And it's it becomes embarrassing,

actually, to to the governments

in some instances,

to be to be precise,

the productive workers army was

asked to repair

kind of a gas like

a gas tank. And this is one of the

biggest

gas tanks, I guess, in the world and

one of the biggest refineries in

Venezuela.

And the manager of this specific

plant said it would it would cost

about, you know, 2.5 million

American to import kind of

a new tank.

They went in and fixed it for free.

They patched it up and

it completely worked.

So this is the example of like

working class dynamism and the

ability of like working people to

actually fix these problems.

Management on one hand, was was

willing to write off a $2

million check.

Despite the extremely hard

circumstances the country is facing

and through solidarity and

collective action, these workers

managed to come together and

and just fix the key industry

in the country.

And I've actually seen pictures of

this battle, and it's the most Latin

American thing ever.

There's these engineers working on

and stuff and there's a guy with a

cuatro just playing guitar to

like amp up the mood of of

the people there to, you know, other

work and just to get them energized.

See, I don't know if I've worked in

really bad places, but this

is a unique camaraderie

that seems to exist

naturally, just the way

folks unite beside

one another in the workplace.

Like, whereas that doesn't always

happen here, you know, even

in a unionized workplace,

but also that sense of ownership

over the means of production.

Like, almost like they know they

really own it or should own it

and are incensed at the idea

that it would go to waste, that it

would be sold off.

And I think

that's where we really lack

and that's unfathomable

to us.

Most workers here, you know, that's

the boss, is he?

That's company property.

I mean, even even the stuff

we take home is like that's theirs,

even though we're the only ones that

work on it and it's, it's how we do.

But that seems very unique.

And even as you describe the

music that goes alongside of it.

Not to say we don't sing on our

picket lines, but it just seems

much more familial than

the workplaces that that I've

been.

I don't know, you guys work anywhere

like that where you're just like,

that's it, we're not going

to take this anymore.

And I mean, I can tell you, like as

a musician, that people look at me

like I'm crazy.

If I start playing music in the

workplace.

Maybe they're remembering Santiago.

During during election night,

I brought my flute to

the newsroom because I'm a

journalism student, and this

was like the most normal thing in my

head. And everybody looked at

me like I was insane

for sure.

But honestly, like,

we need to bring back

working music, you know, and that

that is the cultural stuff.

And I talk about that a lot too.

That like and that's

what.

I don't mean to get on a bit of a

tenure here, but that is a big part

of like building.

Movement is also building like

community and to build community.

Culture is an element of that.

And art and music and

dancing and like these things

go is a part of that.

And I feel like sometimes we forget

about that. And you just reminded me

about that because, you know, like

that is that is a very Latino

thing, right? Like, yeah,

I can picture that in my head

already. And again, that's amazing.

But like you said, like culture is

like the soul of the comments, you

know what I mean? It's this thing

that could just very easily unite

us all.

And I mean, like, I've worked in

restaurants for much of my life and

when like a catchy song kind of

starts playing and like, we're all

in the back, the coworkers, the

chefs will start singing along.

And, you know, I've seen that kind

of smile, that warm feeling you get,

but still, like, you know, it's it's

not the same kind of militancy.

It's not the same willingness to

sacrifice, like

when when Cuba had this, you know,

almost strike.

You know, I was I was thinking, you

know, is Fred Horne going to get put

in cuffs? Like what's what's going

to happen next? Right.

I wanted to see this.

I'm like, yeah, man. Like I didn't

pay my dues as a kid.

You ever for years you're standing

up for us and like, man, Fred Hung

like I was on strike with you.

Be three. No. Three. I work with

York. So we're the first union

that Doug Ford legislated back

to work. And I think we were the

first law he passed to legislate us

back to work.

And Fred Heineman, he gave a speech

when we were at Queen's Park.

And I'm like, yes, let's storm

this place and throw this guy.

Oh, it's like he just gets you

going.

But yeah, I really want to see that

from our union leaders in this

country. Like go to jail.

Really? Like fight for us,

fight, fight for our right for wage

increases. Fight for us to to be

able to live with dignity.

There's not enough of these people

in the movements or the people

who are in there are extremely

comfortable.

No. Yeah, I agree so strongly

with that and I know that's a

lot to ask, but

at the same time there's people who

are willing to make that sacrifice,

who are willing to put their

life on the line in that kind of

way. And I feel

like, yeah, like if

we're going to get anywhere, we're

going to have to be a little

uncomfortable sometimes.

And I feel like the second

things get uncomfortable in Canada

is when things fall

apart.

And.

No, I mean, just as.

What do you think about this?

It just makes me think of how

Canadian politics and politicians

have been.

The sounds of a watered down

and where you

need that fiery, vibrant

militancy.

Like we're in a class war and we

really do lack somebody standing

up there telling us to take up

proverbial arms.

Aside from the music, like I think

we joked around about that.

But the more that we talk

about that, it's it is part

of that culture and that

black color that needs to

be part of any movement that

also makes it fun and emotional.

And it just seems to stand

in such contrast to what

we want or what the political

class here in Canada seem

to want. Right.

We've done a lot of discussions

about the NDP and

their desire to have candidates who

don't stir the pot, who don't use

inflammatory language.

And this seems to be quite

the opposite.

And I just I love how we're hitting

on all of these key things that are

missing but aren't

things that are out of our reach.

You know, what this just reminded me

of, too, was

I just remembered a speech

that Lula gave, and

I cannot remember exactly what he

said. But before he went to jail,

um, I remember

he gave this, this very iconic

speech, and he was inspiring

people, you know that.

They may be locking him up, but that

the movement like has to continue

that.

He was.

He turned himself in.

Like he was willing to go

to jail.

To keep everything alive, you know,

and.

That's I feel like that's exactly

kind of like what we're talking

about. And I just remember that

because that was such a powerful

moment and.

We don't see that here, you know?

No, definitely.

My main concern

when we talk about, you know, how we

can make our labor movement

a lot more militant or mimic

what we see in South America.

And I'd like to ask Alex

if you think that and I know not all

the countries in South America are

the same in the labor movements

within them are definitely not the

same. But typically social

movements are nonhierarchical

or the good ones are.

Right. And what we're aiming for is

a post neoliberal world.

But if we are using institutions

that are in itself colonial and.

Defer still to neoliberalism.

Are they actually

transforming?

Are we end?

Are is is South America

actually ending up

with the kind of progressive

governments that they need

versus ones

that are still somewhat tolerant to

resource extraction from?

External forces.

So.

That's why I'm looking to

the social movements specifically

on how they can maybe transform

something different or demand

something different too, in

the people they put in power.

They're responsible for putting in

power.

I think the question that

you bring up has

has definitely been thought about

and scholarly discussion with no

clear cut answer.

What?

Yeah. There's like there's Jeffrey

Webber, a professor at York,

wrote a book called

Think the Day After the Revolution

as more of the same or something to

this effect about the original

pink tide, saying like, you know, we

elected all these governments, but,

you know, inequality is still very

much entrenched.

We still have the ending

to resource extraction.

And there's still a lot of this in

Pink Tide v2.

Right.

Like Gabriel Bolick,

the guy in Chile, the president

of Chile is like a modest social

Democrat. Like this is like what

you would see in Chile is the the

best you could hope for from Jagmeet

Singh is like NDP

and it's still a high degree of

tolerance for for the multinational

mining companies

in Peru.

It's the same story.

And, you know, we shouldn't sanitize

the legacy of of the first pink

tide, but that's that's exactly

where the social movements come in.

It's to hold the feet to the fire,

to make sure that the promises of

these governments actually

gets kind of taken up where

where I kind of saw

like in Venezuela, we don't have

the exact same parallel with state

repression of the left as

they do there, or just, I guess

about anybody really,

just because the situation has been

so dire, like we're talking about

coup attempts, mercenary incursions

to overthrow the government.

Drone attacks on the president like

it's really bred a

high, high degree

of paranoia, to be honest, from

state leadership.

But, you know, even in the social

movements that have supported the

governments and

social movements that have just

really come from the base

of just regular rank and file

Chavistas have been able to kind of

emerge.

So another group that I spoke to

is called Pueblo El Pueblo.

And there's things transitions

a bit tricky can either mean like

people to people or town to town to

town they so

a bunch of are I guess organizers

again from Chavistas

realized that there was a serious

concern with getting food into

cities, that people were facing

acute hunger.

So they they went into small

communities and communes and

in the countryside

and began organizing kind of network

distribution of of food produced on

these kind of small per,

I guess more or less peasant or mom

and pop farm,

you know, sites of production

and getting their food out into the

cities. And I like when walking

around Caracas, you see these

markets of these these peasants

coming in and kind of

selling their goods at what they

call solidarity prices,

not government subsidized just

really what the

farmers could could barebones afford

to make ends meet selling it to to

really poor barrio dwellers and

urban slum dwellers rather.

But it's interesting, like when,

when I met some of these these

folks, I went to a place that

Chavez built called C

C without Kariba.

So not to go on a really long

tangents, but

a lot of poor in Latin America, a

lot of poor communities are built up

on hills, into mountains.

And this because of, you know,

ecological change and even

like regular seasonal like

rainstorms, it makes them

really susceptible to mudslides and

destruction.

So from like one day to the next,

like your house is gone, you don't

have insurance. It's not the same

kind of situation that we would

expect, like here with people facing

disaster.

So essentially, Chavez built victims

of these mudslides, their own

like little kind of town at the top

of this mountain

and going there is some of the most

breathtaking views I've ever seen in

my life. Just an amazingly

beautiful.

But they were actually supplying

food to the schools,

like directly giving it to, like,

principals.

So it's a little weird because like

I was there kind of like as this

researcher and like I was with some

of the more like administrative

staff for blah blah blah and

there was like one guy hauling all

this food and I'm like, Guys, come

on. I'm like, I can't, I can't

in good conscience, watch this one

guy lug around like a £60

bag of, like, corn.

So, you know, we all got our hands

dirty and kind of lifted food

into the school. And it was

it was it was wild to

see because like in their

constitution, children have

to be given food twice a day in

schools.

And the government, what they were

they were doing were importing food,

processed food, food, though it

wasn't actually like of nutritional

value.

And I mean, like I'm talking about

food in schools and like in the

United States, you know, they have

like lunch debt, you

know what I mean? Like.

Ridiculous concept that is just

it's terrible.

It's capitalistic and it's

parasitic.

When it comes to talking about food

in schools, we don't even have to

look anywhere.

We can look at Canada because this

is something I'm actually just

currently writing articles about,

which is the fact that Canada's

ranked 37th out of

40 something wealthy nations in

the world for childhood food

insecurity, where one third of

kids in Canada don't have

access to breakfast

due to food insecurity, where

something like it's over a

quarter, something like yeah,

something like a quarter of Bipoc

households are struggling with food

insecurity, something like

I think it's around a sixth of

infants struggle with food

insecurity, which is like.

Ridiculous number six or an infant.

Yeah, it's

yeah. Households with children

are twice as likely to struggle

with food insecurity. In Canada,

we're the only G7 nation without

a school breakfast program

which inspired, of course,

by the Black Panthers.

Shout out to the Black Panthers.

Yeah, we're the only one who doesn't

have that. So Canada is so woefully

behind in that and I just wanna

mention because there's that should

be incredibly radicalizing

for everybody because there's

absolutely nothing you can do to

blame a child for not being able

to have food and the impact that

that has on

increasing the cycle

of poverty because you know,

how does that affect their

education? How does that affect

their ability to learn to be

successful in school, to be able to

be what comes after school?

Right. And so, yeah, just I want

to throw that out there because it's

a huge issue in Canada and

it's good to see that there's

something being done about that

in Latin America, at least.

And frankly, that is

I have no idea how we don't have

a massive movement movement around

here because it's we're

at the bottom of the

of the list, essentially, in terms

of dealing with that.

We have like a weird like second

best is on like you know whatever

happens we point to the states and

it's a.

Weird sort of better than.

The school thing.

Yeah. And I just I don't get it.

It's like they're dead last and.

Well.

I think that leads me to my question

because the Americans like their

Constitution, is so rife with issues

and our charter

itself, you know, doesn't secure

economic rights.

So when you mentioned something like

lunch twice a day,

like something so very specific,

a collective responsibility,

one that makes sure people are fed.

I mean, that's completely lacking

from our idea of what governance

is for at the moment.

We talk about mutual aid a lot, but

and it's necessary.

People are hungry.

But that is a shift in ideology,

right? That's normalizing the idea

that we have to scrape what we can

and rather than doing it on the

larger scale that government

facilitates. So I wonder

if you think

it's like the chicken or the egg,

right? Is it in the Constitution

because it was an understood ideal,

a cultural understanding

or, you know, did they were

successful?

Chavez, you know,

put it in the constitution, I

assume, you

know, get a progressive government,

instill things in the Constitution

that start to ingrain it from there.

I ask because, you know, is our

energy,

should our energy be spent at any

some level petitioning

God petitions, petitioning

the government to.

Rewrite our charter and without

opening that whole debate on.

Is that possible?

Is is there value

in shifting the Constitution

or does it that have to happen at a

different level?

The contrast between how the

Canadian Constitution was adopted

and how, like the more recent Latin

American constitutions were adopted

is very stark.

Like we have just a bunch of elites

write our Constitution and submit

it through like an amendment

formula, like in

Chile. Most recently, I think they

had like an actual like, you know,

you vote for a,

a person to go to a constitutional

convention.

So you have like a democratic

process to bring community concerns.

And then, you know, unfortunately,

in Chile, the you know, they drafted

this constitution, they put it up

for referendum and it got defeated.

But, you know, I think

the point I guess I'm trying to make

is we have to work with what we

have.

And it's you know, I heard a lot

of like, you know, our glorious

Constitution, our great

constitutional rights when I was

in Venezuela from like militant

socialists. Right.

But then when I told them, like, oh,

you know, the Constitution says

private property rights, ours in

Canada doesn't.

People would look at me gobsmacked.

They're like, what do you mean?

Like you don't have guaranteed

constitutional private property

rights? And I'd say, Yeah, it's a

paradox. We have all these

mining companies that set up shop

here and commit atrocities

in sub-Saharan Africa, in Latin

America, but yet

their assets aren't constitutionally

protected.

Given this, you know, actually

legislating your way to like a more

socialist society is quite easy in

this country.

They're not it's not a

constitutional amendment

to to actually take like

Bell and Rogers and nationalize

them, for instance.

But it's a small change to the

Property Act.

It's a legislative change that could

be passed quite easily.

That's, again, when I'm with.

The right people in power.

Yeah, you have to want power.

We need leftists who want to

actually do good things with power.

And that's what we don't have.

Well, that's a whole other

discussion, I suppose.

We don't have leftists running any

parties at the moment, so

we are such a far step from

that because

one just needs to, you know, point

to B.C., where social movements

did play a part in getting the

NDP elected with hopes that

the they would be allies in the

environmentalist movement and

could enact some reforms that would

be lasting, you know, especially

when you get a majority government.

So that's you know, that's

clearly not our way just

yet.

I also think it's worth mentioning

that in

the vast majority of electoral

victories in Latin America, these

were new parties that were created

in recent history.

Right.

And.

I don't fully know

what the and I don't and not fully

I don't know what the answer is in

Canada, but I,

I just want to throw that out there

because, you know, the idea

of working outside of

the NDP is

met with a lot of

hesitancy.

And I understand where people

are coming from when it comes to the

ascendency. But it is worth noting

that in Latin America that's

exactly what people did.

They worked outside of the

traditional parties and they won

in that way.

And that's worth something.

Though certainly

it's there are limits to

our kind of parliamentary system in

terms of new parties coming in

like Dr. to historical in Colombia,

Petro's party is very new

and it's exactly what, you know,

kind of I think what you're referring

to.

But it's not difficult to navigate

when you have social democracy

that is just, you know, doesn't

mobilize purposefully

and then tries to talk about, you

know, what we are terms like

reflation and like home heating

bills for, you know, subsidies for

your landlord to kind of

take the sweat off your back

in Latin America.

There's there's a very much among

social movements.

I don't want to be so broad as to

say all of Latin America, but at

least kind of what I saw in in

certain parts of Venezuela, a

real kind of embracing of

we're going to come together and

converge to kind of do these

specific things.

And if, you know, our time is done,

our time is done, I'll move on to

the next kind of task to organize.

There's always something pressing.

I have the fortune of being in

a parish of Caracas called

the 23rd of January,

and the social movements there are

so strong that they actually have an

oral pact with the police

not to enter the community.

I saw one cop in this neighborhood

and this guy was in the subway

station and he was running to get

off the train to get into like a

staff entrance.

And he didn't want anybody to see

him.

Like you'd like you'd walk around

and you'd see like National

Guardsmen who are not police, the

army, but they'd be around without

without their weapons.

Now there's two there's

a lot of.

I guess the term is that we see a

lot of North American news about

Venezuela as colectivo.

And this is a very kind of fuzzy

term. Some collectives

act like, you know, pro-government

thugs

and not just against like, you know,

right wing insurrectionists against

like, you know, garbage workers

protesting the rights.

Some of these collectives will go in

and act as, you know, thugs or

security, but other ones

actually form form communes and try

to actually give back to their

community.

So this one that I saw, Alexis,

Vivian, they kind

of run security for like or

organize around 22 blocks in

the 23rd of January.

They know who gets in the

neighborhood. They have a CCTV

camera setup.

So it's kind of weird.

It's like an abolitionist politics,

but still like we're using the tools

of the oppressor to make sure that

people aren't dealing drugs in our

neighborhood. Like we could

actually, like, look around and see

strangers coming in.

They have a hotline, like a tip

line. So it very much works like

a911 call center, except

we got the police and they diffuse

the situation. If there's like a

drug deal going down, they kick the

drug dealer out of the area.

They've also done things like

like they run like their own kind of

garbage collection that they

organically use with like pigs.

So they get these, like, urban pigs

in this like area to eat

like garbage that the city won't

take.

They have like a swimming pool

that they filled up with fish and

they turn it into like a fish, like

an Olympic sized swimming pool, and

they turn it into like a fish farm

so that the community can have

access to the fish whenever they

wanted to.

This, like, sound like San Diego is

you're smiling like this sounds

crazy like thinking about this in

Canada, like, you know, and like

just turning a swimming pool into

this is just absurd.

But it's it's a reality.

Like, if you don't have access to

garbage or if you don't have access

to, like to to

these kinds of food, like, people

appreciate this, but it's that kind

of basic level of mutual aid that

that people are firmly kind of

aware of and behind.

I'm Kelly Santiago's

smiling because

he envisions the same here.

You know, I think you're you're

reminding him to of

what he'd like to see.

You know, he gave a shout out to the

Black Panthers earlier.

That's for, you know, a reason.

Right. Santiago, you know, like

these ideas seem to be like your I

see your brain just filling with

ideas in

terms of mutual aid and community

building.

Yeah. Like, if we wait

for a government

to come in and

help people, we're going to be

waiting entirely

too long and people are going to

continue suffering, you know?

Is this kind of, like, innovative,

community driven work that.

That we need to start seeing

more because like I said, like,

I think there's a misconception as

to how well off people are doing in

Canada.

There's a lot of people who are

living in in a real deep

poverty, a poverty

that is much more invisible

than even like, you know, like in

the United States is a lot of

poverty. That poverty is a lot more

visible. You know, you go to a lot

of places in the United States.

You can see the poverty, you can

feel the suffering.

I feel like people in Canada don't

realize that a

very similar situation is happening

here, but it's much more hidden

and.

And what do we do? We just accept

that that's the reality.

Until we can completely change

everything. No.

Like that's we're not going to

completely change everything

tomorrow. And people tomorrow are

going to be hungry.

You know, and I want to see,

you know, out of building that

kind of community driven solidarity.

That's where it starts.

You know, that's where the movement

should begin.

And not that.

That's that's very much my praxis.

I feel like all these stories that

Alex has are part

of the solution, which is glad I'm

I'm glad we're recording them and in

amplifying them because.

Yeah. Like, we can't just wait until

it gets so bad that we can't

envision anything else.

Like, we can draw from

these. And we don't often get to

hear stories of success from South

America.

Obviously, our our news is

completely Eurocentric and any

examples of real people power

does not make our airwaves,

especially these

really specific examples of

workplaces or communities that

you've been able to provide.

I think.

I think it would be great if people

could just hear more of these

and and envision

what's possible.

And I keep saying, like, oh, is it a

cultural thing?

And I think that's just an easy out.

You know, but there is a lot of

work to do in terms of what

people.

Envision how they see themselves

in terms of power structures and

abilities.

I wanted to pivot just before we run

out of time, because I think we

spent a lot of time talking

about social movements in South

American countries where.

They have friendly governments.

But before we started recording.

Well, friendlier governments,

because you've given us some

examples, you know, food

for thought there. Definitely.

But before we started recording,

Santiago was talking about

how difficult and dangerous

it is to be.

A proponent of the left in

South America.

And although Columbia was

successful,

there's still resistance in South

America. Surely

social movements that are in

the defensive position

I described earlier.

You know.

And just also building on

that. One thing that's important to

mention whenever you're talking

about Latin America is

U.S. imperialism and not

just U.S. imperialism.

Canadian imperialism to.

Right.

And the violence and the danger

that comes from that.

And that's a conversation we like.

I just want to bring that up that

right on top of that

because.

Yeah, like Alec talks about the role

of social movements in other

governments. It's like hold the feet

to the fire.

But how do they.

I'm in where I believe

we don't have the level of state of

oppression that's

comparable.

It still would be hostile to a lot

of these endeavors.

Right. You would face maybe

violent resistance even to

try to attempt some of the things

that Alex is talking about.

So and it kind of brings back to the

land back discussion where there's

this immense sense of courage,

despite the paranoia that might

exist, rightfully so.

The knowledge that in U.S.

imperialism is always looming

and other repercussions

of.

Not toeing the line of neoliberalism

embargos, but still

that that courage that exists

and that determination that these

movements.

Are responsible for these

turns in history, right,

where it wasn't always just

appealing to the government or

the Constitution, but actual

fights on their hand.

Can anybody lend some insight

as to.

So in like being a

left winger and Venezuela is

very different than that in

Colombia,

like, you know, just

just from my reading, not like my

lived experiences, people going

through like checkpoints of like a

U.S., I think they call it like

self-defense units,

which are like landlord backed

militia, as if they know you're a

leftist, like they'll execute you.

Right. Right there.

It's it's dangerous.

And these organizations were

backed by the presidency for the

past three, three or four

presidents, at least.

So it's it's quite, quite hard

in that context.

But sorry, go ahead.

No, even I was just thinking even

longer. Like that's been

100 years plus of

that kind of resistance.

Certainly in Venezuela, given

like the Bolivarian Revolution, a

lot of the like older people I would

talk to had like a, you know, for

memories of what it was like living

in the sixties, the seventies and

the eighties.

Remember the state repression and

they remember like, you know, their

neighbors disappearing after, you

know, you know, scattered

bombing like leftist propaganda on

campus or like

hiding a gun in their like house

for like a friend who was involved

in the insurgency, things

like this. But again, like not the

same kind of politics in the

same exact way.

But. On the role of.

Of US U.S.

imperialism and Canadian

imperialism. It's

I don't understand the Canadian

foreign policy anymore.

Like it literally doesn't make

sense. It's nobody else is

is hostile to this government or

these people anymore.

We're really telling in the U.S.

and we're even we're tail ending and

opposition like we're so involved

in this other nations democracy

that we're recognizing another

government that doesn't exist.

The government of Juan Guaido,

which officially and kind of the

Canadian like diplomatic

channels, they don't talk to Maduro.

There's no like embassy in Venezuela

anymore.

There's no communication,

like to get my visa to go into

Venezuela, to go to Mexico City.

Right. Like it's there's you know,

the government here needs to really

like end the hostility

against the Venezuelan government

because it only hurts the people

and it actually makes the society

more corrupt to get around

the blockade.

The government passed something

called the anti blockade law

and in this they said all private,

all procurement of government

contracts is to be conducted

secretly.

This is not transparent, but this is

because of the blockade.

This is literally because of one

incident, incident where they were

trying to sell oil to a refinery in

India.

The United States got wind of this

and then sent a message to

the owners of this refinery saying,

if you accept this shipment of

Venezuelan oil, we will blacklist

you from the American market.

We will no longer accept anything

that you produce in the United

States that for any company

is is suicide.

Right. So immediately they they you

know, they backed off and they did

the refinery refused to process

the Venezuelan oil.

So they passed this anti blockade

law.

And now, like, nobody nobody knows,

like even like government supporters

are like we have no idea what the

government's doing with the budget.

We have no idea who the government's

paying for what and how much.

And in this, if you think about it,

there's huge opportunities for graft

and corruption.

But and these are like the direct

effects of the sanctions to make

a democratic regime right.

To actually make it actually makes

the situation worse and unlivable,

not just on the population, but at

the level of government procurement

and finances.

And one can only imagine

these acts and

lack of transparency are just

going to be used to demonize

that government who are simply

acting in response.

But I guess we, we know that game

over and over.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's, it's like you

create a situation in which the

government has to be secret and then

you call them corrupt.

Like, from our perspective, 100%.

But from the perspective of social

movement activists, it's

a blind that it's hard to get

around.

Right? It's like you want to keep

these people honest, but you don't

have the means to.

Right. So it's there's a element of

despair. I don't want to throw a

shred of hope, but,

you know, their situation does come

with these these nuances that are

that are so difficult.

It does make me think

and I've been thinking about this a

lot lately, which is now

that there there is

such a widespread movement around

Latin America.

You know, historically, there has

been such a dependance economically

on the United States,

you know, in the West in general.

But Latin America is a very

it is a very rich region

in terms of rich and resource

rich. And the land

is very.