Venezuela’s Experiment in Higher Education in the Context of the U.S.’s Imperialist War against the Bolivarian Revolution

• In Event: Global Governance, Transformative Relations, and Human Rights in Education

Proposal

In 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela, launching what became known as the Bolivarian Revolution, identified as pursuing 21st Century Socialism. The Chávez government undertook a revision of the Constitution, which was approved by 71.8 percent of the 40% of the eligible votes who participated in the referendum in 1999. Among the 29 misiones initiated by the Bolivarian Revolution between 2003 and 2014 were 3 education-focused ones, including Misión Sucre, which addressed higher education. The goals of Misión Sucre, begun in 2003, were to increase access to and reduce inequality within Venezuela’s system of higher education (Griffith, 2013; Pineda Olivieri, 2017), by expanding the number of institutions, eliminating tuition fees, and providing free books, scholarships for living expenses, and free food at campus canteens (Ivancheva, 2023).

Key to achieving this goal, the Venezuelan government established the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (Bolivarian University of Venezuela or UBV), which had a main campus in Caracas as well as decentralized sites (aldeas) in each of the 335 municipalities in the country. The programs offered through UBC were all connected to structural transformation of Venezuela (e.g., Legal studies, media and communication studies, environmental policy social management, integral health, education, politics and government, architecture, and informatics). Moreover, all classes incorporated an extensive fieldwork project, during which students applied their knowledge in practice with marginalised urban and remote rural communities, usually ones where they lived.

As a result of Misión Sucre, access to higher education increased dramatically; for instance, between 1999 and 2015 the number of Venezuelan students in tertiary education tripled (Peters, 2021). Venezuela also worked through ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for Our Americas) to attract large numbers of students from Latin America to attend its public universities, including the Venezuelan Medical School for Latin America (ELAM) (Giacalone, 2021).

High status academics in traditional universities, including many who had been leftist activists as students, worked against UBV, not voting to accredit UBV’s programs and not recognizing UBV’s graduates’ credentials when they applied for graduate programs (Ivancheva, 2023). And, of course, members of the opposition political groups were very vocal in their criticisms of the “quality” of UBV’s programs.

However, Misión Sucre and UBV also suffered, as did other aspects of the Bolivarian Revolution, from the imperialist war waged against Venezuela, primarily by the U.S. This war consisted of supporting a coup d’état in 2002; promoting a strike by oil workers (2002-2003); “kidnapping” a Venezuelan diplomat (Alex Saab), who stopped in Cape Verde on his return from a trip Iran, seeking support to counter U.S. sanctions in 2020 (Movimiento Free Alex Saab, 2023); and imposing unilateral coercive measures (i.e., economic sanctions) on Venezuela (2015-present) (Emersberger & Podur, 2021). Moreover, U.S. government propaganda supporting this imperialist war has been echoed by corporate media and even some “liberal” media outlets.

The proposed presentation, which could be co-sponsored by the Latin American Special Interest Group (LASIG), will summarize the political, economic, and higher educational developments in Venezuela as well as outline key aspects of the imperialist war and its consequences.

References

Emersberger, Joe and Podur, Justin (2021). Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela. New York: NYU Press and Monthly Review Press.

Giacalone, R. (2021). Internationalisation of Venezuelan Higher Education 50 (2004–2014): An Attempt at Ideological Diffusion in Latin America. Iberoamericana – Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 50 (1): pp. 94–104.

Griffith, Tom (2013). Higher Education for Socialism in Venezuela: Massification, Development and Transformation. In T. G. Griffiths and Z. Millei (eds.), Logics of Socialist Education: Engaging with Crisis, Insecurity and Uncertainty, pp. 91-109. Dordrecht: Springer.

Ivancheva, Mariya P. (2023). The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Movimiento Free Alex Saab (2023). Lawfare contra Venezuela, el secuestro del diplomático Alex Saab. Caracas: Movimiento Free Alex Saab.

Peters, Stefan (2021). The Education System of Venezuela: Inequalities before, during and after the “Bolivarian Revolution”. Chapter 44 in Sieglinde Jornitz and Marcelo Parreira do Amaral (eds.), The Education Systems in the Americas. London: Springer Nature.

Pineda Olivieri, Jesús Humberto (2017). The transformational potential of higher education inclusion: biographical trajectories of students from disadvantaged environments in Venezuela. Göttingen, Sweden: Universitätsverlag Göttingen Press.

Author

• Mark Ginsburg, University of Maryland