Caracas, July 28, 2023 (Press Mincomunas): “The Commune must be the space where we can bring Socialism forth. Socialism should not emerge from the Presidency of the Republic, not decreed. It has to be created from the bases, a popular creation of the masses”, oriented Commander Hugo Chavez in a public speech.
This Friday, July 28, on the occasion of the 69th anniversary of his birth in Sabaneta de Barinas, in the heart of the Venezuelan plains, people honor and recognize Chavez as the father, promoter, and guide of the People’s Power organizational process, which builds Socialism in practice from the territory, following his theoretical legacy.
“The Commune is everyone’s responsibility. I want to insist on a theoretical line. We must arm ourselves with a holistic, integral vision. We must look at the whole reality and assume it as a whole,” said the revolutionary leader on June 11, 2009, in his first “Aló Presidente Teorico” (Theoretical Hello President).
With his particular pedagogical style, the commander compared the Commune to a cell, “But who has ever seen a cell alone? It has to be joined to another and another to form the tissues and the human body. Therefore, it has to be an integrated system of Communes, not an isolated Commune over there, and this is valid from now on for the Communal Councils, which are nuclei of the cell which is the Commune”.
On October 20, 2012, less than five months before his physical departure, during a televised Council of Ministers to promote the “Coup de Timon: Commune or nothing!”, Commander Hugo Chavez warned his Cabinet about the “serious” mistake of assuming that the Commune is a matter of a single Ministry and entrusted to his successor, Nicolas Maduro Moros, “as I would entrust you my life: The Communes, the social State of law and justice.”
From a very early stage of his administration, the President promoted the creation of the legal basis and the institutional structure to promote the People’s Power organization and to accompany it in the construction of the Communal State as a higher stage of Bolivarian Socialism.
Legal basis
The People’s Power Ministry for the Communal Economy was created in 2004 by Commander Chavez, and in 2005, it became a similar Ministry for Social Participation and Protection. The Communal Councils came into being, and on April 9, 2006, the Law that recognizes them institutionally was enacted during the broadcasting of the Sunday program “Alo Presidente,” number 252.
These structures of people’s sovereignty reached a higher rank in the legislative pyramid with the approval of the Organic Law of the Communal Councils in 2009, published in the Official Gazette on December 28 of that year, which repealed the 2006 Law.
Between 2006 and 2010, with President Chavez’s passionate leadership, several laws regulating different aspects of the Communal Councils were enacted, such as the Organic Law of Social Controllership (2010), the Organic Law of the Communes (2010), the Organic Law of the Popular Power (2010), the Organic Law of the Communal Economic System (2010) and the Organic Law of Public and Popular Planning (2010). These offices were unified in the new Ministry of the Popular for the Communes and Social Movements in March 2009.
“The Ministry promotes, defines, interconnects, but mayors, governors, all the people, all communities, we will make a greater effort so that the Communes multiply,” he emphasized in one opportunity.
New times adaptation
In his first Theoretical Alo Presidente, made on June 11, 2009, Commander Hugo Chavez dedicated it to the Communes and the five fronts for the construction of Socialism. “The communes constitute the guarantee of the welfare and happiness of the people in the XXI century. This is how we ratify it, 12 years after the “Alo Presidente Teorico N° 1″, in which our Commander Chavez outlined the path to follow: the consolidation of the Communal State with the grassroots”, recalled President Nicolas Maduro in 2021.
In compliance with the mandate of the eternal leader in his Coup de Timon, the current Head of State instructed at the end of 2022 a process of transformation of the People’s Power laws, an update to the new times to make them more efficient, expeditious and fast, which the National Assembly (NA) assumed through a massive public Consultation throughout the country and debates in the Federal Legislative Palace.
In this regard, last June 26, the President, in his television program “Con Maduro +”, promulgated the reform of the Organic Law of the Communal Councils, sanctioned by the NA on June 22, highlighting that the new legal tool will give more power to the people in the execution of their projects, with an anchoring of the integral community development to the Constitutional Law of the Homeland Plan. It also reinforces the autonomy of the Communal Councils as Government instances in the territory.
Eternal Commander
“El Arañero de Sabaneta” was the second of six children of Hugo de los Reyes Chavez and Elena Frias, both primary school teachers. He attended elementary school in his hometown and university at the Venezuelan Military Academy in Caracas, from where he graduated with the rank of Second Lieutenant in 1975.
On February 4, 1992, Chavez led as military commander an armed insurrection against the government of Carlos Andres Perez and his neoliberal measures package sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which three years prior triggered the social explosion known as El Caracazo.
With his famous “For now,” he acknowledged that he was unsuccessful in his attempt at military rebellion, being arrested, tried, and sentenced to two years in prison in Yare prison (1992-1994).
In 1994, the current administration agreed to the dismissal of the process opened against Chavez, and upon his release, he left the army and embarked with firm determination on the political struggle; he founded the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) and began to travel around the country socializing his proposals.
His campaign program convinced the electorate in the elections of December 6, 1998, with 56.2% of the votes, he won the presidency, immediately promoting the election of a Constituent Assembly that drafted a new constitutional text, approved in an unprecedented referendum in December 1999, and in July 2000 he ratified his favoritism at the polls for the period 2000-2006, being undefeated in victory in electoral processes for the office of President until his sowing in 2013.
