The New Cooperative Movement -- 70,000 Co-Ops

When President Hugo Chavez assumed power in 1998, there were only 762 cooperatives in Venezuela.[iii] These cooperatives, as the rest of Venezuelan society, had survived the structural adjustment measures started by the presidency of Carlos Andres Perez in 1989. In the last two decades, Venezuelan GDP fell almost continuously, and inequality became extreme. An estimated 80 percent of the population lived in poverty and more than half of the employment was in the informal sector.[iv] The Venezuelan economy is also heavily dependent on oil revenue, with most of its GDP coming from oil exports.[v] Much of the food is imported, well under FAO's minimum food production levels for food self-sufficiency.[vi] To deal with this social and economic situation, the Chavez administration has embraced a new development model, referred to as "endogenous development." Its conceptualization draws heavily from Osvaldo Sunkel's ideas in Development from within: toward a neostructuralist approach for Latin America (1993), which calls for an adaptation of import substitution policies where local development, adjusted to their specific conditions and employing local resources, equity and human development are prioritized. The official interpretation of endogenous development also emphasizes the importance of local, diversified and sustainable development, and the commitment to respect Venezuelans' different cultures and identities.[vii] Most significantly, drawing from its commitment to include the historically-marginalized sectors of the Venezuelan society, the Chavez government also recognizes the need to "democratize" the economy, combat inequalities and encourage solidarity in order to pay the accumulated "social debt" to the popular sectors. The cooperative production model has increasingly come to define the development strategies of the "Bolivarian Revolution." In its August 2005 report, SUNACOOP registered a total of 83,769 cooperatives, with more than 40,000 cooperatives created in 2004 and almost 30,000 more cooperatives formed in the first eight months of 2005. The total number of associates in October 2004 was 945,517, up from 215,000 in 1998. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1631

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