Venezuelan Communal Councils - History

History

In the 1980s, Venezuela began an extensive decentralization process, launching mayoral elections and handing over new responsibilities to local governments. After Chávez was elected president in 1998, he continued the decentralization but changed its emphasis. He called for transferring power not to local government, but instead directly to popular movements.

This “popular decentralization” has led to a series of experiments in grassroots democracy. First came the Bolivarian Circles, neighborhood councils that were officially autonomous, but often linked to and supportive of the government. At Chávez's urging, the Bolivarian Circles were mostly succeeded by Electoral Battle Units (UBEs), which mobilized the pro-Chávez vote for elections.

Next, the government launched Local Public Planning Councils (“CLPP”), in which citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats were to collaborate at the city level to address local problems. Under this model it was difficult to have genuine election and control by the community when spokespeople were expected to voice the concerns of up to 1 million people in some districts. By 2005, most of the Local Public Planning Councils had become mired in bureaucracy and dominated by politicians.

Taking the idea of the communal councils from the CLPP law, a pilot project was launched by a group of revolutionaries who previously belonged to the Socialist League in the city of Cumaná. From there the concept was taken up nationally and placed in the hands of the newly created Ministry for Popular Participation and Social Development (MINPADES), which explained in its information pamphlet that “just as a house can collapse easily if its base is not sufficiently strong, this can also happen to our new democracy that we are constructing: it will only be invincible if its base is strong and its base is the communal councils”.