First paragraph (Teaser):

VHeadline.com en Español news chief, Jesus Nery Barrios writes: Almost unnoticed the widely-publicized "March in defense of university autonomy" held here in Merida, Thursday, passed the immense majority of Merida's people and by the rest of the country by.

Rest of the text:

How come a march ... called by University of The Andes (ULA) authorities, the second largest and second most important uni in the country with 30,000 students and almost 5,000 employees ... where there was to have been the participation of the largest and more important uni in the nation (Universidad Central de Venezuela-UCV) with almost 50,000 students and 15,000 employees; La Universidad del Zulia (LUZ), the third most important uni; Carabobo (UC), Oriente (UDO) just to mention the largest that were called ... could gather no more than 1,500 people in a "march" for only one hour?

How can the organizers explain this weak attendance, given the fact that many professors had 'blackmailed' their students by offering good grades if they attended the march and bad if they did not ... and ... given the fact that ULA authorities paid for transport and accommodation in Merida from the university's budget to bring the marchers in?

I am as surprised everyone else now dealing with these figures, but since I have been living here in Merida for the last 25 years and since I used to study at the ULA and know very well what's going on in this "university with a city inside" (as the Meridean poet and historian Mariano Picon Salas dubbed it), I can give VHeadline.com readers some hints that could help explain this strange event and to take a glimpse behind the main implications the event has raised for the university's future in the context of the process known as the "Bolivarian Revolution" and the construction of "Socialism of the 21st Century."

I had to laugh when I heard reporters from ULA 107.7 FM saying that "Merida was painted blue" (the official colors of ULA) and that "national TV channels were covering the march 'live' when, in reality, I saw traditional political party flags (whites ones from AD, green ones from Copei, black and yellow ones from Primero Justicia) with their respective local leaders marching, along with placards supporting Nixon Moreno (promoter of the most recent demonstrations in the ULA); and saw how the main TV stations (Venevision, RCTV and Meridiano TV ) were broadcasting the FIFA World Cup matches ... capture almost the whole attention of Venezuelans just the same as every four years.

* The only channel that could possibly have been broadcasting from the march would have been Globovision (24/7 news channel) and then only to a select audience who can only view it on cable ... but, like most poor Venezuelans, I can't afford cable TV.

Just to let you know ... Merida is a small city located in the Venezuelan Andes with 700,000 population and a small downtown zone. The organizers of the march call to start at 9:00 a.m. but it only started to move by 11:30 a.m. (according to ULA 107.7 FM reporting) and departed from the Economic & Social Sciences Faculty (FACES) in the University La Liria Nucleus ... went down Las Americas Avenue ... turned onto El Viaducto Campo Elias (that links Merida downtown to the northwest part of the city) ... then turned onto Fourth Avenue (passing 2 blocks away from where I live) all the way down to the parking lot at the old Engineering Faculty (a route of no more than 600 meters).

Since those are indeed the "mean streets and avenues of the city" as the local press claim it to be in Friday's editions, it's just a small stretch since Las Americas Avenue is about 2 km long, from the La Hechicera University Complex to Urbanizacion Humboldt in the southern outskirts of the city ... and Fourth Avenue is 2.4 km long, from the Milla sector to Glorias Patrias Square (and they only covered 5 blocks of it, from 26th street to 32nd street).

If the marchers were as "massive" as they claim it was, it would take more than the exact hour it took for them to reach their goal, a platform set up in the above-mentioned parking lot where ULA Dean, Lester Rodriguez was the only speaker, addressing a 15 minute speech to the participants with the usual, predictable string of silly remarks we're used to hearing from the Venezuelan opposition in "the defense of the university's autonomy against the authoritarian Chavez government," without a single mention of the gunmen who shot and almost killed police officials and National Guard ... or about the attempted rape of a policewoman by fugitive "student leader" Nixon Moreno and his accomplices during the last violent demonstrations. It was an omission by the university authorities that we easily understand to be legitimizing the violence of a few participants in the march, accompanied by local opposition leaders, presidential candidate Sergio Omar "El Cura" ("the Priest") Calderon, former governors and the former Dean of the ULA (all belonging to the old traditional parties).

As I said already, during that period of time most people were already busy watching the World Cup ... Argentina vs Serbia & Montenegro (a very exciting one, by the way) and did not pay much attention to the march, even when the organizers had loudspeakers shouting absurd slogans against Chavez: "militarism against the universities" and the marchers were blowing whistles and cheering Nixon. When all this finished and the ULA Dean had made his short speech, the "crowd" dissolved into the city which recovered its traditional calm as if nothing happened (there was no comment about it on the streets) and everyone prepared to watch the next World Cup match: Netherlands vs Ivory Coast.

Could that be the explanation for why the march was so brief and insipid ... the marchers were walking fast so that they could go see the rest of the football matches?

* It does not sound so comic and tragic if at the same time we take into account more serious, structural issues that are revealed which show the real problem that the student movement is facing ... educational reality and the future of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

Despite the fact that progressive forces within the university and the city of Merida did not participate in the march (which was the most refined proof of reactionary and fascists forces within them and a little sample of what there is in the rest of the country); despite the fact that most people in Merida and Venezuela are more interested in the football matches because they're sick to death of hearing empty arguments from politically-dead leaders against a government that is shown to be reasonably effective in solutions for the most important and immediate problems the country has ... it is the traditional apathy of ULA students (70% of them from Merida, 30% from elsewhere), and of which 80% never go to vote ... and the inability, incompetence and carelessness of the Bolivarian forces within university and the local Bolivarian leadership that causes people like Nixon Moreno, his M-13 and reactionary minds within ULA and Merida to take the lead and do whatever they want ... even to infiltrate paramilitaries as students, by registering them as real students, even attending classes.

It's hardly surprising that, in Merida, the option "Yes" won in the 2004 Referendum against Chavez ... putting it on the map of most conservative and anti-revolutionary regions Venezuela, together with San Cristobal, Maracaibo and Nueva Esparta (the latter with opponent governors in their respective states).

We know that already that the opposition is almost dead in Venezuela, and that they need to take every excuse they can achieve to make noise ... as in the case of this invisible march. We also know that the issue here is that Venezuelan universities are the last stronghold of the nation's conservative forces and that the only way the Bolivarian Government can put these places at the service of the Venezuela's progress is to intervene and to reorganize them and free them from the mediocrity (students plagiarizing from the Internet without punishment or expulsion, out-of-date curricula) and the corruption that is corroding their members. It's the same way that graduates are appointed to leadership posts within the State ... and you can just imagine what kind of fate awaits us under the circumstances that these more mediocre and corrupted people will lead, destroy us, as they align themselves with local and international reactionary counter-government forces given the natural expectations of the laboratory in which they are being created.

Nevertheless, we must recognize that is not an easy task for any government ... including Chavez' ... even when he's backed up with the precedent of what happened at PDVSA (a vital institution for the life of Venezuela as a nation and as an independent country), that was finally cleaned up by means of an internal struggle in the context of a local and foreign-organized sabotage that almost destroyed the Bolivarian Revolution and which almost led us into a civil war ... even if we note that no other country in the world would have had a chance against such an attack, nevertheless, Chavez and the people of Venezuela succeeded.

The universities issue is, however, more complex ... because it is more a social issue than material (although there are many material interests involved) such as the huge privileges enjoyed by the university authorities: luxury cars, high wages, traveling expenses, social status that gives them the chance to negotiate university assets (land, buildings), and influences.

To reorganize Venezuela's universities means to reorganize first the perception of ourselves as individuals ... as a society and as a country ... a struggle that is still to be completed and that is apparently taking place but not yet started. To start, we need to define what it is that we want and (believe it or not), what has already been happening in Venezuela since 1998, precisely to show and to fight against what we DO NOT want (although it is a huge but necessary step). Apparently we want to be socialists ... to be a socialist state ... but we do not discuss and/or study socialism ... not even in the universities, where it is supposed to be!

That is why it is important, to start ... if we really want it to be, to exist and (why not) transcend ... as socialists to establish that the universities, as the natural places for study, teach socialism and that all those Venezuelans who want to be socialists can study with critical spirit, not in the traditional dogmatic way ... it is not a question of creating more new universities like the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV) or a Mision Sucre to give poor people higher education if they do not teach new things ... even more, if they do not teach what President Chavez claims we should, and need to, be to succeed as a species: the socialism of the 21st Century.

If UBV and Mision Sucre are created to give the poor the chance that traditional universities don't, by simply building new classrooms and labs and buying the same books written by the same authors they read and study in ULA, UCV and LUZ ... what is the new here?

The teachers at UBV and Mision Sucre are following a different program to teach their students?

Do those programs include socialism and marxism ... the philosophical-scientific basis for true socialism?

Do those teachers teach new socialist ethics against the corrupted moral of capitalism?

What about new science and philosophy?

Wouldn't THAT be truly revolutionary for a start?

As you see, university reorganization is more complex than winning students authorities elections (apparently the problem that originated the protests 2 weeks ago in Merida ), it is more than "defending autonomy"; it has more to do with what we really want for ourselves and for Venezuela and to obtain the means to achieve it.

Otherwise is to perpetuate the status quo by continuing the eternal circle of action-reaction, reform-revolution, autonomy-intervention, peace-violence, march-countermarch, student authority elections to remove the current leadership and elect "new" ones who will continue with the same vicious circle: only protest against too much exams, to get more intensive courses to graduate as fast as they can ... no matter if they really LEARN something ... cheap food, cheap transport fares, cheap registration fares, against too strict teachers, but never to protest out-of-date libraries, authoritarian professors, mediocre educative programs or against the fact that marxism (that is, socialism) has been banned from all universities forever and, even so, Chavez expects to build up a socialist Venezuela.

To build a Socialist Venezuela without philosophical-scientific marxism is to expect something true and constructive from a 221-year-old university without ethics and without excellence whose slogan, written in its emblem, goes "Timor Domini Principium Sapientiae" (The Principle of Wisdom is the Fear To God).

Jesus Nery Barrios
Jes...@VHeadline.com

* I dedicate this article to my former Professor
at the University of The Andes, Franz J.T. Lee