Caracas, June 21, 2023 (Mincomunas Press) – In compliance with the agenda called Cultural Coup de Timon, culture leaders, artists, and representatives of the People’s Power Ministry for Culture and of Communes and Social Movements chaired an event to exalt the Venezuelan idiosyncrasy rooted in the country’s communities.
At the Pedro Fontes National School in Caracas, the Minister of Culture, Ernesto Villegas, highlighted the symbolic weight of this act, celebrating the will of the Venezuelans who defended and preserved their identity, holding on to their patriotic rights.
“There is a critical mass of men and women willing to fight for our identity and for the cultural dynamics in the neighborhoods in the Communes, villages, schools, high schools, factories, parishes, and hamlets,” he said.
Villegas also clarified that in Venezuela, unlike other countries where capitalism is a professed social custom, culture is not assumed as a commodity.
“What we want to build is precisely antagonistic to that society where the bigger devours the weak (…). I defend our strengths. Today, the great contradiction is between hope and discouragement,” he added.
Fighting the counterculture
On his part, the Minister of Communes and Social Movements, Jorge Arreaza, highlighted that Venezuelan popular culture is the strongest and most powerful tool to defend our sovereignty and independence.
He warned that today imperialism continues to sell us content through cinema and digital platforms through which we are permanently bombarded.
“What are we watching? What are we consuming?” questioned Arreaza as he emphasized that the people organized in their territory can act to combat counterculture.
“Every time a child learns to play cuatro, every time a child learns to dance the joropo or takes out of his territory something that had been lost or was about to be lost, there you are defending our independence and identity,” he reiterated.
Belkis Hernandez, from Santa Rosalia parish, conveyed a message on behalf of all those cultures of different branches that, for various reasons, were forced to leave their homeland Venezuela.
“Since the creation of the cultural cabinets, we started working, taking over the spaces, giving cultural life and happiness to a community. There is no revolution without culture”, he stressed.
