Open the universities

ON MARCH 19, Cecilia Arocha, the president of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), suspended all university activities due to acts of violence committed in the vicinity of the Faculty of Architecture and Engineering. As a result, 11 students were wounded. As socialists, we reject such violence against students.

Throughout the week, many students attended assemblies to express their opposition to a possible suspension of classes, but Arocha nevertheless decided to forge ahead with her completely undemocratic decision, and without the slightest effort to consult with students.

The curious thing is that classes were suspended for a week, and nothing was done in subsequent days. In other words, university officials eliminated university life for 10 days, but did not take any concrete measures to attend to the issues that students would encounter in these weeks.

Therefore we ask: Who benefits from this suspension of classes?

First of all, the director and other university officials benefit. A university closure provides an ideal pretext for Cecilia Arocha and other corrupt officials to implement their ineffective security policy of gates, to carry out their relentless evictions of students from the university's public spaces, and to impose their authoritarian control over all campus life.

While they haven't had gates in the UCV, they have tried to apply this ineffective policy for years, with the only result being a more and more unsafe and desolate university, the creeping privatization of public space, and a more repressive security policy toward students. Surely Arocha can be counted on not to miss this opportunity to ask the Ministry of the Interior and Justice to provide yet more resources, which she will then divert in order to supplement her private security forces and other privileges, as she has done before.

Secondly, the Guarimberos and other violent groups benefit from the closure. What has taken place provides the perfect scenario for these groups to impose their politics of extreme violence, as they have already shown in recent weeks. The result is the further restriction of the rights of the majority to enjoy their freedom of movement, to go to their jobs and to freely express themselves.

Ultimately, such violence diverts attention from real and pressing problems all across the country, problems that require concrete solutions. On March 19, these violent groups attacked, robbed and forced dozens of students to remove their clothes. These types of crimes are completely reprehensible. These violent groups have been accused of being Chavistas, but they have nothing in common with revolutionaries. These act of paramilitary violence are criminal, like the guarimberos [urban militias] of the extreme right who have assassinated people and assaulted hundreds of citizens for daring to criticize their actions.

Thirdly, the government bureaucracy stands to benefit. The strategy of the bureaucracy has been totally ineffective at curtailing the extreme violence that has taken place in recent weeks.

Since the beginning of the year, the government has enacted a number of economic austerity measures, including currency devaluations, tax credit and subsidies for private and transnational companies (which has contributed to corruption and profiteering), lower tax rates for businesses, significant increases in the cost of basic foodstuffs (such as chicken and coffee).

Many of these measures were the outcome of the "economic peace talks" that the government has embarked on with the country's most powerful corporations, such as La Polar and Fedecamaras. The government sits down to such "peace talks" with everyone except students, workers, communities, community media and other segments of the poor and working classes.

WHO SUFFERS from the suspension of classes?

Without question, the closure fundamentally harms the majority of students who have been forced to leave behind their educational home. The closure hurts all those affected by inflation, scarcity, hoarding and speculation and all of those who must live on wages with a constantly shrinking purchasing power.

However, we who have criticisms to air and proposals to make are left out. Instead of listening to our voices, they call us infiltrators, CIA agents and saboteurs. The fact that workers and students are mobilizing with concrete proposals does not sway the purveyors of violence, the guarimberos, the government bureaucracy or university officials. They can think of only one type of solution. Their instinct is to impose their conservative dogma, to use their tools of repression, and to impose taxes on us.

Today, as the great majority, we have the task of combating opportunist and anti-democratic forces such as the FCU [Federación de Centros Universitarios/Federation of University Centers] that want to capitalize on the discontent and prevailing unrest, but don't have any clear or consistent proposal to defend our right to study. The assemblies that they convene are nothing more than political theater where they never take any votes, where they don't hear any proposals, and where those who stray from the line of FCU President Juan Requesens are shut down.

A university that has been shut down is a university in the shadows. The country cannot progress with closed universities. Our country will only evolve through political proposals and actions that allow for the consolidation of the student struggle and in which we can exercise our rights. To close the universities is to cede ground to the violent groups who intend to kill anyone who thinks differently.

It is not the moment to abandon our public spaces. Let's go to the universities, let's embrace diversity of opinion and freedom of thought, and let's engage in a dialogue among equals about Venezuela's real problems in a democratic and purposeful manner.

Translated by Karen Domínguez Burke