CHAVEZ OFFERS ALTERNATIVE OF A DECENT SOCIETY

The other night, in a room bare except for a single fluorescent tube, I heard these words spoken by the likes of Ana Lucia Fernandez, aged 86, Celedonia Oviedo, aged 74, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two young children. Until about a year ago, none of them could read and write; now they are studying mathematics. For the first time in its modern era, Venezuela has almost 100% literacy. This achievement is due to a national program, called Mision Robinson, designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas is giving everyone a secondary school education, called a bachillerato. (The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century.) Named, like much else here, after the great liberator Simon Bolivar, "Bolivarian," or people's, universities have opened, introducing, as one parent told me, "treasures of the mind, history and music and art, we barely knew existed." Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1773908,00.html

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