![]() Chavez had the great virtue of having united all these struggles. Sometimes people try to say that Chavez inspired everything, but it’s not true. Finally, there came the influence of the Soviet revolution and Marxism, which was another source of inspiration for revolutionary movements. This was a highly revolutionary idea which transcended territoriality – that there was a common enemy, and that we have to fight it together independently of where we come from. Next came the war of independence, and Simon Bolivar’s idea of all Latin America struggling together. Later his ideas began changing, but that was his training.īut before Chavez, without any doubt, there was an accumulation of revolutionary struggle, beginning with the indigenous resistance to the arrival of the Spanish. Remember that Chavez originally was fighting the guerrillas as a soldier that was his job. I attended secret meetings long before the civilian-military coup attempt, when Chavez was in the military. LR: I first met Chavez during the PRV period. And now there is an economic war – but what is really happening? How is it that an oil producing country becomes the first ecosocialist country? To start with, please explain to us the situation in Venezuela, before and after Chavez. So we may know that there’s a ministry of Ecosocialism, but we don’t know about Trueke, or about the Guardians of Seeds. There’s a Left media that defends the government, and a Right media that demonizes it. QS: It’s very difficult and maybe impossible for most people outside the country to know exactly what’s happening Venezuela today. Their conversation ends like their lives – abruptly, leaving us wanting and needing more, and compelling us to find it for ourselves, where the sun is always rising, on the ecosocialist horizon. Quincy Saul (QS) is an organizer with Ecosocialist Horizons who brought these two men together in search of a synthesis, seeking to build a partnership in the belly of the beast with the revolutionary ecosocialist movements of the global South. Joel saw a vision of ecosocialist revolution from New York City, the capital of capitalism, and Livio came to us with an experience of ecosocialism from the jungles of the Amazonas to the mountains of the Andes. This conversation was a meeting of minds, or as they say in Venezuela, “un encuentro de saberes,” – an encounter of knowledges and ways of knowing. ![]() ![]() Joel Kovel passed away in 2018, Livio Rangel in 2023. This is a transcript of a conversation between two ancestors: Livio Rangel (LR), from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a lifelong organizer and educator in indigenous and campesino communities, and Joel Kovel (JK), from the USA, co-author of the Ecosocialist Manifesto, and for decades an exponent of ecosocialism around the world. A conversation and interview with Livio Rangel and Joel Kovel
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