Cool Way to Learn Spanish

I've wanted to share this for a while, but kept putting it off until, well, now. Anyways, something I've been doing since I got back to improve my Spanish comprehension is reading Democracy Now! headlines... in Spanish!

The independent news organization, Democracy Now!, already has probably the most compelling collection of summary headlines posted on their site each weekday. They piece through the garbage that normally gets reported as "news" and highlight the most important items of the day. Well, they also happen to have a direct translation of these headlines into Spanish each day. This makes it a superb tool for language learners who want new real-world content each day to study and practice on. Not only that, but Democracy Now! also provides a Spanish podcast so you can hear it and read along.

One last tool I've discovered is this web reader from WordChamp that facilitates the easy translation of words from Spanish to English (and back) with a simple mouse over. It'll even give you nice audio sample with a click of a button on a speaker icon next to most words. Talk about convenient. Best of all, this is all free.

This has all been very useful to me. I hope it might be of help to someone else out there.

Thoughts and Conclusions

So I've been home a few days and it's probably time I started reflecting on my experiences so here it goes...

Up until this point I have been very hesitant to give too much of my opinion on what's going on in Venezuela because frankly, I didn't know what to think and I was waiting until I had a better idea. I had heard and read quite a bit about Venezuela from my life in the states and interactions with friends. I had seen and promoted some of the documentaries that you see posted on this blog. Unfortunately, it is always really hard to gauge what's really happening when all you get are snippets and anecdotal stories from a far away land.

The portrayal of Venezuela in the media we get is obviously tainted with either idealism from progressive outlets or downright vitriol and lies from many mainstream establishment sources. This of course is to be expected given each side is playing to its base of supporters with the establishment media obviously playing to the interests of corporations and Wall Street who would like nothing more than to see the whole place sold off and privatized with the oil controlled by the filthy rich, but I digress.

By moving to Venezuela I was hoping to get a broader view. I was only partially successful. Unfortunately, I underestimated just how long it would take to get a handle on Spanish. I had 5 weeks at a Spanish school in central Caracas, but I still came out struggling to understand most conversations (I'm not giving up though!). The result is that I was still dependent on much the same media I could look at beforehand along with the few people who could speak English in the country. The Global Exchange trip at the end became my last best chance to hear differing opinions.

So what have I come away with? Well, I definitely have a much more nuanced opinion of what's happening down here than before. There are a lot of great things going on. In the country side, I visited a bunch of Missions--social programs set up by the government--and I talked through interpreters with many people. There were programs I observed and heard about that are giving free college education, free education for adults that never finished high school, free healthcare from highly skilled Cuban doctors in poor communities, and government subsidized marketplaces to buy basic foods.

I also heard and was fascinated by the increasing decision making power that is being shifted down to the people through community councils. Apparently it just takes a few neighbors getting together to form one of these councils and the government will give out money to work on community projects. All of these projects are decided democratically after much debate with, I believe, anyone over 15 getting a vote. There is no need for representative middlemen who are so easily corruptible in the United States.

Another thing I really loved about Venezuela is that politics is everywhere. It seems most everyone and everything (for better or worse) is somehow involved. No one is afraid to give their opinion. It is a much deeper form of democracy then I've ever seen here in the U.S.

I also want to mention a few of the problems I saw. While there are a lot of promises being made and projects being constructed there is also a lot of bureaucracy and corruption. As I was living there I could see many buildings all over town that looked 80-90% completed but seemingly weren't being worked on anymore. There were also streets that were torn up as if to repair them, but the rubble sat idle. I was told that often times, especially before an election, perfectly good roads and sidewalks would be torn up only to be redone just so the Mayor could point to something as being accomplished.

Other weird things I heard about were the big hospitals charging people for the materials they needed even while the services might be free. The result is there are still poor in the cities that can't afford medical care because they can't afford the fillings, the bandages, the tools, or whatever is needed by the doctors to treat them.

Support for Chavez varies greatly. In the upper and middle class areas of Caracas I was hard pressed to find even one Chavez supporter. The full first half of the trip everyone I encountered and could partially understand (that was the hard part) was livid in their hatred of Chavez and everything he did. Note that I never got a chance to visit the poor areas there. It wasn't until I got into the country that could find even one Chavista. Then it was hard to find someone who wasn't a Chavista. It's really a very divided country and it makes things very hard to figure out. It did appear, though, that those in the country were more cooperative and quicker at utilizing the social programs than those in the city.

So it's very hard to make any conclusions in all this. I feel like I'd need to be there a lot longer, maybe another year. All I can say is I'm still quite sympathetic with what I think are genuine efforts on Chavez's part to try and lift the poor up out of poverty. I also see a great culture of democracy and cooperation down there which is far richer than I see here in the States. I only hope they can continue to keep up the movement and pressure their leaders to make wider and deeper reforms to further empower the population and take power away from the many tyrannical sectors of the economy (like corporations) that remain.

A busy week at the Missions

It´s been a very busy week for me with not much time available to access the Internet. The week has largely consisted of the group of us going from Bolivarian Mission to Bolivarian Mission, including Missions Robinson, Ribas, Sucre, and Mission Barrio Adentro. These are basically social programs set up by the government to help those most in need. You can read more about them on Wikipedia by clicking here. For each Mission we visit their offices in the community and spend a few hours interviewing and talking with the people running them and even some of the participants being helped by them. It has all been a very enlightening experience and I will be talking more about it in a few days.

My trip here is unfortunately coming to a rapid end. I am scheduled to return back home on Tuesday the 5th. Its been a wonderful experience for me, meeting so many new people, making many new friends, and immersing myself in whole a new culture. I have experience nothing but kindness and generosity from the Venezuelan people and have enjoyed every minute of being here. I will be reflecting more and posting many more new pictures once I´m home.

The Transition to Global Exchange

So I had to say goodbye to my family on Saturday as I joined up with the Global Exchange part of my tour. They were always very nice and patient with me over the last 5 weeks and it was hard saying goodbye.

I have a lot to say, but little time. Unfortunately, from now on it appears I´ll have sporadic Internet access. I´m in an Internet cafe as I type this.

There are a total of 9 of us on this tour which is just about the right number to converse with and move around. All of them are wonderful people and we get along very well. Its so nice to also have a tour guide whose lived here all his life to ask questions of. So far we´re staying at a hotel in Caracas, but tomorrow we´ll be leaving for Barquisimeto.

Please remember to send some comments and emails. I know you have a lot of questions, because I know I haven´t covered a lot of stuff. I´ll try to get to them when I can.

A look back home

I want to share some particularly striking news articles I've read recently on the social and economic state of my home country.

American Inequality Highlighted by 30-Year Gap In Life Expectancy

The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.

The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being - more familiar to observers of the Third World - with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world’s prisoners.

U.S. Health Care Still Ill, Survey Finds

The United States also lags behind other countries in health-care results, Schoen said. "Even where the U.S. average improved, other countries have improved much more rapidly," she said. "As a result, we are falling further behind the leaders."

For example, the United States is now last among 19 industrialized nations in premature deaths that might have been prevented by better access to health care. In 2006, the United States was 15th on the list.

The scorecard also contended that 100,000 lives -- and some $100 billion -- could be saved each year if health care were improved in the United States.

Unfortunately, as the economy falls into recession and the housing bubble deflates, things are only going to get worse for many Americans, especially those about to retire. A recent CEPR report gives us a glimpse into this world.

Housing Market Meltdown Will Cause Massive Losses in Household Wealth

The report projects that if house prices stay the same through 2009, the median household headed by a person between the ages of 45 and 54, those in their prime earning years, will have 24.7 percent less wealth than did the median household in this age group in 2004. These households will have accumulated just $113,268 in net worth in 2009, barely $15,000 more than their counterparts in 1989, whose net worth totaled $97,600.

If real house prices fall 10 percent, the median household in the 45 to 54 cohort will see a 34.6 percent loss in wealth compared with the median in 2004 while families in the 18 to 34 cohort will lose of 67.6 percent. If prices fall by 20 percent, the most pessimistic scenario, families in the 55-64 cohort will experience a loss of 49.6 percent of their wealth compared to the same cohort in 2004.

What you've been dying to know...

I known the question you've all been wondering: just how much does gas cost down here in Venezuela?

Well, after a family tour of Caracas and a pit stop at the local gas station I can finally answer that question. There were two grades of gasoline: one at .07 Boliviar Fuertes per liter and other at .097 Biolivar Fuertes per liter. Doing a quick calculation from the numbers in the photo:

(.070 VEF/ 1 L) * (3.785 L / 1 gal) * (1 USD / 2.152 VEF) = $0.12 per gallon

(.097 VEF/ 1 L) * (3.785 L / 1 gal) * (1 USD / 2.152 VEF) = $0.17 per gallon

So there you have it, $0.12 per gallon for the standard grade. Double checking on the Internet confirms this number. I'm sure pompous Hummer owners everywhere must be salivating at the thought. Unfortunately, I've noticed a few of them down here too.

More on U.S. Interference

Here is a very recent interview with Eva Golinger, a human rights lawyer and author, who has done a lot of work investigating the U.S. involvement in the coup in 2002 using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

An interview with Eva Golinger

The most conclusive facts and evidence includes a series of documents classified Top Secret by the CIA, dating from March 5, 2002 to April 17, 2002, which clearly refer to plans for a coup against Chávez—who, how, where and when—everything laid out in detail. One in particular, dated April 6, 2002—five days before the coup—emphasizes how the opposition sectors, the CTV, Fedecámaras (the country's main business federation), dissident soldiers, the private media, and even the Catholic Church were going to march through the streets in those first weeks of April and the coup conspirators would provoke violence with snipers in the street, causing deaths, and then they would arrest President Chávez and other important members of his cabinet.

What's more interesting though is some of her comments on things that are still happening in the country.

The U.S. embassy in Venezuela is very active. These days, its main strategy is subversion. This is manifested by USAID, NED, IRI, Freedom House, CIPE, etc. funding opposition groups, but there is also an attempt to penetrate pro-Chávez sectors and communities. This last tactic is one of the most dangerous and effective.

and a bit more...

The CIA and the State Department maintain various fronts in the country, as they always do. There is Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a U.S. corporation based in the El Rosal sector in Caracas, which functions as a filter for funding from USAID to opposition NGOs and groups. Then there is the Press and Society Institute, part of the Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) network, which receives funds from the NED, USAID, the CIA, etc., to execute its pro-U.S. policy and to accuse the Venezuelan government of being repressive and of violating the rights of free expression and a free press. Freedom House and USAID are also financing right-wing student leaders and movements, sending them to Belgrade to train with experts in the Orange Revolution (Ukraine) and other so-called processes for "overthrowing dictators." Recently, the neoliberal right-wing Cato Institute, which advises Bush and receives funding from Exxon Mobile and Philip Morris, awarded a "prize" worth $500,000 to an opposition Venezuelan student.