Well, we have been in this battle to preserve our democracy for the last 10 years. There have been a lot of movements during these years. Our group, youth group – a lot of march – protest. We also, during these past 10 years, we used a lot of different ways to spread our message and to organize.
But now, I think, the difference is that people is just getting more comfortable with Internet and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter. And these techniques is helping us to spread, to organize better, to spread better our message. And now it´s more easy to find people in other parts of my country that think like us. So we have, for example, a fan page in Facebook that has more than 50,000 followers; with that, we interact with a lot of our fans. We can know with that space, how they think about our activities, how they think about our protests. And with that, we also can encourage them to do the same – to also practice tolerance and not be so reactive against a difficult situation.
But trying to plan how can I help my town? How can I help my country when the government doesn´t help us to have a better life? Internet is a very massive way to contact everybody – Twitter, Facebook – but it´s only, it´s very good to spread the message or to send news to everyone; but it´s not very good to call people, to go to an activity if you want to call people to go to an activity in a real way, not virtual, but going to a protest. You also need the regular methods: you need to call them, you have to explain to them what your activity is about.
Because at the end, what is happening with this tool is that some people feel or think that only because they are tweeting what is happening, that´s enough – no. So at the end, that´s true, that with these techniques, you can reach more and more people; but the problem is that with some of those people, they really don´t go to an activity that you want to promote in a real way – like going on the streets to make a protest – because they think: “Well, I just will retwitter [retweet]. I am only going to spread my message.” And they think that that´s enough. And that´s not true. You know, you have that problem with the cyber-dissidents. That they feel like what is happening in the ´net, the worldwide network, it´s enough. And sometimes they forget that in the real life, you also have to make your voice noticed.
The government– the– the problem with– another obstacle with Internet is, like it´s more easy for you to spread what are you doing, but also, it´s more easy for government to know what are you doing – and to get information about your movement. He can know your profile, who you are. After 1,000 of tweets, he can know what you think, which are your fears, which are your friends, which are your networks. So it´s more easy for the government when they want to attack you. He knows better about you, who you are – and that´s not good for us.
Another thing is, like, well, this information that we put on the Internet, sometimes, the government uses it to affect our activity. We once put the cell phones numbers of a network, you know, of the country; the day before of a national protest they started to send a message to everyone, to say that tomorrow will not be a protest. And they also hacked our web page. So people started to get confused. Because, you know, you put too much energy on the Internet, under your web page, under your virtual information; but that is very vulnerable. Internet, at the end, is very vulnerable. So, you know, you have to be prepared for those actions that the government can make against your movement, using the same tools that you are using to spread your message.
Rodrigo Diamanti of Venezuela is president of “Un Mundo Sin Mordaza” (A World Without Censorship), a network that promotes freedom of speech in the Americas and around the world.
In 2007, Diamanti obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Andres Bello Catholic University of Caracas. Two years later he received a master’s degree in political studies from Complutense University in Madrid. He is a founding member of the Venezuela Student Movement of 2007, which works for free and fair elections, transparent governance, freedom of expression and association, and reconciliation in Venezuela.
Diamanti is a senior fellow of the Alliance of Youth Movements (Movements.org) and has lectured in Turkey, Spain, Mexico and the United States.
Venezuela is a South American country of 28.5 million people with a history of multiparty constitutional democracy. President Nicolas Maduro took office after Hugo Chavez succumbed to cancer in 2013.
During the 1998-2013 presidency of Colonel Hugo Chavez, a series of constitutional and legal changes were implemented that make it far more difficult for citizens to change their government. The Chavez government systematically used public resources to secure its power, closed down independent news media, and used legal and extralegal means to harass and intimidate its critics.
Soon after his first election, Chavez called for a new constitution that would give expanded powers to the president and replace Venezuela’s bicameral Congress with a unicameral national assembly. The new constitution was approved by referendum in 1999. Chavez acquired substantial control of the military, the judiciary, the electoral commission, and the news media. The government closed Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV Internacional), the country’s largest television network, and forced into exile the president of Globovision, the other major opposition-aligned network.
The Chavez government’s increasingly repressive methods generated strong public opposition, including a series of public protests by students, workers, and others who were not previously aligned with the political opposition. In the 2010 National Assembly elections, opposition parties received the majority of the votes, but under the new electoral rules the government took a substantial majority of the seats in the Assembly.
Venezuela’s vast oil resources allowed Chavez to implement policies that steered the country towards a socialist economy. The country’s oil wealth funded a major expansion of government social programs, much to the approval of government supporters in the lower class. Oil became the foundation of Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba, which has strengthened substantially over the last few decades due to shared ideology and financial and security interdependence. Venezuela has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s major benefactor, financially supporting the Castro regime. Cuba in turn has supported the transformation and strengthening of the Venezuelan military. In 2004, the two nations founded the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a group of socialist and social democratic nations working toward economic integration. ALBA and its member nations often champion anti-American policies and sentiments. This alliance has led to close ties between Venezuela and nations such as Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.
Immediately after Chavez’s passing, Vice President Maduro assumed the role of interim President. He then went on to narrowly defeat an opposition candidate by a 1.5 percent margin in the April 2013 presidential elections. Maduro has pledged to complete Chavez’s socialist transformation of Venezuela.
Recently, Venezuela has struggled with a rising crime and homicide rate, blamed by some on a recent economic downturn, the availability of arms, and the weak judicial system. However, Chavez and Maduro both have linked this increase in crime to the media’s portrayal of both fictional and real violence and have continued to influence what programming and content is available. Both leaders have expanded the security forces within the country, calling on police, militias, and the military to fight crime.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Venezuela earned “partly free” status, with an overall rating of 5. A rating of 1 represents the most free and 7 represents the least free.
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