Students in Venezuela are at the center of a national debate on constitutional reforms. Recently, a violent clash on a university campus in Caracas made international news. But what do we really know about Venezuela’s newest political actors?
On December 2nd, a referendum on constitutional reforms will allow the Venezuelan electorate to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on two sets of proposed articles. Throughout the reform process, students have been at the center of the action. They held open sessions in downtown Caracas to discuss the reform proposal while it was still being debated in the National Assembly. Since then, students have been received by representatives of three of Venezuela’s five branches of government. Lawmakers invited opposition student leaders to debate the reforms with other youngsters who defended the changes to the constitution, and allowed student protesters to enter congress and express their demands. The Supreme Court of Venezuela accepted a proposal from the students asking them to scrutinize the legality of the reforms. The independent National Electoral Council also heard student demands, namely the request that it postpone the referendum.
All of this took place amid an air of tolerance that few would expect from the politically divided Venezuela. In truth, the events showed a level of openness on the part of government officials that surpasses what we have come to expect in the U.S.
Then last week, the peace was shattered when news reports came that gunfire erupted at the Central University after a march. Two were wounded. Images of the violence were shocking. Press reports made it appear as though students in favor of the reforms had attacked those against them. However, the opposite occurred; participants in an opposition demonstration targeted a group of pro-government students at the social work school by trapping them inside a burning building. Finding themselves surrounded by flames, the social work students made desperate phone calls asking friends to help them escape. Some of their rescuers were armed and fired shots in the confusion of the hasty exodus.
The straight story is buried amid a recent Wall Street Journal article on student movements that glorifies opposition leader Stalin Gonzalez. The article reads: "The law school’s student-center room, a base for Chávez supporters, still smells of charred wood and plastic from a fire that recently destroyed it. Workmen are still cleaning up the School of Social Work. There, pro-Chávez students barricaded themselves for several hours during a standoff with a crowd of students, until a group of armed civilians on motorcycles intervened to allow the Chávez supporters to escape."
The Journal describes "students" pitted against "pro-Chavez students," as though the latter were some kind of exception. This is hardly the case. Marches in favor of the reforms consistently draw tens of thousands of Venezuelans, both young and old, to the streets.
President Chavez has said that the opposition students are the children of wealthy elites such as those who led an abortive coup against him in 2002. While the student movement cannot be reduced entirely to the issue of social class, young people’s politics do tend to break down along the same lines as divisions among the rest of Venezuelan society. Traditional elites stand to gain the least from the new pro-poor government policies under Chavez, and so are unsupportive of the president they deridingly call a "monkey," while on the other hand, the large underclass of poor and marginalized Venezuelans – including Black and Indigenous citizens – is gradually becoming more empowered. New voter registration campaigns have targeted minorities and millions of families are benefiting from new state-subsidized programs in medicine, nutrition, sanitation, literacy, and other essential areas of human development. Elites complain that the state should lessen social expenditures, that such efforts are a waste or an effort to buy votes.
It is no surprise, then, that students at private and elite universities are those most likely to oppose the constitutional reforms. Meanwhile, students at state-run "Bolivarian" universities, where hundreds of thousands of low-income Venezuelans are finally gaining access to higher education, are overwhelmingly in support of the changes.
Two of the reforms that will be put to Venezuelan voters next week pertain to specifically students’ rights. Article 109 would allow university students to choose their school administrators through elections in which one student vote would have the same weight as one faculty vote in campus politics (instead of ten students equaling one professor). Instead of the "crackdown" on universities that some claim is President Chavez’s true intention, the reform would increase student self-determination in all institutions of higher learning.
A second article would reduce the legal voting age to just sixteen. Since about three-quarters of Venezuelans are under the age of thirty, this could give access to the ballot to about two million youths. And, if student participation in electoral processes resembles student prominence in street-level political actions such as marches, these young people may truly become an amazing force for change.
Some claim that Venezuela’s reforms would keep President Chavez in office for life and allow him to censor dissent. Neither of these things is likely to happen. Democratic culture in Venezuela is thriving, as is clearly demonstrated by the student movements. Whether young people in Venezuela advocate pro- or anti-government positions, their active engagement in local and national debates should be taken as a positive sign.
Megan Morrissey spent a year in Venezuela as an exchange student with AFS Intercultural Programs. She now works as a media analyst at the Venezuela Information Office in Washington, DC.
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