[Shef2venez] Two articles on Festival

[John Smith]

 The Militant Vol. 69/No. 13           April 4, 2005  
 
 
Int’l meeting in Vietnam plans outreach, program for world youth festival 
 
BY JACOB PERASSO AND ARGIRIS MALAPANIS  
HANOI, Vietnam—Sixty-seven people from 36 countries attended the Second
International Preparatory Meeting for the 16th World Festival of Youth and
Students, held here February 27-28. Delegates discussed activities they have
been involved in to build delegations to the festival around the world. They
also agreed to an initial outline of the program for the gathering. 

National Preparatory Committees (NPCs) have been established in at least two
dozen countries to build delegations to the festival, reported Miriam
Morales, general secretary of the World Federation of Democratic Youth
(WFDY) and a leader of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba. The
previous two world youth festivals were held in Havana, Cuba, in 1997 and in
Algiers, the capital of Algeria, in 2001. More than 12,000 youth attended
the gathering in Havana and nearly 7,000 went to Algiers. The gatherings
were marked by the political tone and character of groups and individuals
engaged in popular struggles for national liberation, union-organizing and
other battles by workers resisting austerity drives by the bosses, fights by
peasants for land, and actions by students against cuts in education. The
youth at these meetings came together to exchange experiences and improve
their understanding of how to advance their struggles. 

WFDY, the main initiator of these festivals that started half a century ago,
is based in Budapest, Hungary. In the past, WFDY was dominated by youth
groups affiliated to Communist Parties that looked to the Stalinist regime
in Moscow for political direction and sustenance. The festivals were
interrupted for eight years as the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the
1990s. The international gatherings resumed on the initiative of communists
in Cuba. 

“For peace and solidarity; We struggle against imperialism and war!” is the
political theme of this year’s festival. The event will be held in Caracas,
Venezuela. 

David Velásquez, president of the Venezuela NPC and the general secretary of
the Communist Youth of Venezuela, reported that the host organizations
proposed the dates of the festival be set for August 7-15, which was
approved. This is slightly later than the dates approved last year, he said,
so the closing of the gathering can coincide with the first anniversary of
the defeat of the so-called recall referendum aimed at unseating the
country’s elected government. A national demonstration to mark that
anniversary is planned in Caracas that day. 

The Aug. 15, 2004, vote had been spearheaded by Coordinadora Democrática, a
pro-imperialist opposition coalition that has had the backing of weighty
sections of Venezuela’s capitalist class and Washington. It was the third
unsuccessful attempt in two years to topple the government headed by
President Hugo Chávez. The previous two included a military coup in April
2002 and a bosses’ lockout at the end of that year. The Chávez
administration has earned the ire of most local capitalists and their U.S.
allies after adopting a land reform and other measures that, if implemented,
would undermine the prerogatives of the local bourgeoisie.  
 
Facilities for up to 20,000 delegates 
Velásquez also reported that youth organizations in Venezuela are
collaborating with the country’s government to organize housing,
transportation, and conference facilities to accommodate as many as 20,000
delegates during the festival. He added that the Venezuelan airline CONVIASA
will arrange discounted fares in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

To encourage attendance, the participation fee—which covers housing, food,
and transportation for delegates—was set relatively low. It will be $200
each for delegates from the imperialist countries, $150 for those from
Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and $100 for other semicolonial
countries. An international solidarity fund was also launched to help
organizations from the semicolonial world maximize participation. 

About 2,500 delegates are projected to come from the host country. Elsewhere
in Latin America efforts are underway to reach out to thousands of youth.
Ana María Prestes of the Union of Socialist Youth of Brazil said such
outreach activities were held during the recent World Social Forum and the
Congress of Latin American Students, both held in Brazil earlier this year.
Another forum for such collaboration will be the Third International
Conference in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, which will be held
April 10-14 in Caracas. 

Julio Martínez, first secretary of the UJC of Cuba, said the Cuban NPC is
organizing to send 1,500 delegates to Venezuela for the festival and is
exploring the possibility of organizing travel from Havana to Caracas by
boat. About 1,000 of the Cuban delegates will come from Cuba. They will
include about 200 students from countries in Africa and elsewhere in the
colonial world studying on scholarships in Cuba. Another 500 delegates,
Martínez said, will come from the more than 20,000 Cubans volunteering in
Venezuela as doctors, literacy teachers, or agricultural specialists. The
UJC leader also reported that Cubana Airlines would offer discounted
airfares for delegates to the festival. 

Leaders of the UJC have been traveling to other countries to help build
delegations. Kenia Serrano, for example, president of the Cuban NPC and head
of international relations for the UJC, reported that she traveled to
Malaysia for that purpose prior to Hanoi and would have a similar stopover
in Peru after departing from Vietnam. 

Jessica Marshall of the Young Communist League and Arrin Hawkins of the
Young Socialists, as well as other delegates from the United States,
reported on activities across the country to build a large delegation for
the Caracas event this summer. These included the second meeting of the U.S.
NPC in Chicago on February 12, which was attended by about 100 students and
other youth from some 40 organizations. 

Delegates from Europe reported initial plans to send up to 150 people to the
festival from each of their countries. Projections from more remote
areas—from Cambodia to Bahrain—ranged to smaller delegations of a few dozen.
Groups from more than 100 countries are expected to send delegations. 

A deadline of April 21 was set to establish National Preparatory Committees
in all countries where efforts are under way to build the youth festival. 

Delegates in Hanoi also discussed the initial outline of the program for the
festival, presented by the Venezuela NPC. 

Velásquez said the plan includes organizing up to a third of the delegates
to travel to a half a dozen provinces in Venezuela, where a number of
seminars will be held. This will allow delegates to get a first-hand feel
for the struggles of workers and farmers in the country for land, jobs, and
literacy. Delegates who stay in Caracas will also have a chance to visit
working-class districts and see the new popular clinics staffed by Cuban
doctors and a growing number of Venezuelan counterparts. The trips to the
countryside will also give a chance to thousands of Venezuelan youth who
cannot go to the festival in Caracas to meet with their peers from around
the world. The workshop on young peasants, for example, will be held in
Cojedes state, where Venezuelan toilers have waged land occupations and
other struggles for land. 

Most conferences will be held at universities and other facilities in
Caracas. Their topics include “peace, war and imperialism,” “education,
science, and culture, communication and technology,” “employment, economy
and development,” and “democracy and human rights.” Workshops will also be
held on the struggle for women’s liberation and the fight against racist
discrimination. 

One of the main activities will be the anti-imperialist tribunal, which will
be held August 13-14. It will be held at the Caracas Exposition Center, with
capacity for 15,000 people. At that meeting, delegates will conduct a mock
trial of Washington and other imperialist powers, presenting evidence by
fighters for national liberation—from Puerto Rico to Ireland and Western
Sahara. 

The third international preparatory meeting, scheduled for April 22-25 in
Lisbon, Portugal, will finalize the festival’s program and activities. 

Miami: students build youth festival 
 
BY SONJA SWANSON  
MIAMI—The local organizing committee in Miami for the 16th World Festival of
Youth and Students held its first public event March 15 at Florida
International University, Biscayne Bay Campus. About 40 students and others
came to see the film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The movie
documents the U.S.-backed military coup in April 2002 that briefly toppled
Venezuela’s elected government, and the mass working-class mobilizations
that led to its defeat within days. 

The program included Luis Henríquez, a leader of the Bolivarian Circles
here, who talked about the relevance of the documentary for today and why
youth should oppose U.S. intervention in the Americas. 

Nicole Sarmiento, who is active in the local committee, described previous
festivals. Young people at these events, she said, have a chance to exchange
experiences about struggles for national liberation, women’s rights, union
organizing, and other fights of working people. She encouraged students and
other youth to make plans to go to the festival in Venezuela this summer,
which will be held in Caracas and other cities August 7-15. 

In the discussion, a member of the Bolivarian Circles here who is a dentist
described the internationalist help by more than 20,000 volunteer doctors
and literacy teachers from Cuba who serve in Venezuela. As a result of this
aid, and other programs instituted by the government since Hugo Chávez was
elected president in 1998, she said, working people in areas that had no
access to health care now receive regular and quality medical care. 

Students and others who came contributed more than $100 to help send youth
from Miami to the festival. Ten people signed up for more information on the
festival and future activities of the local committee. The next meeting of
the committee will take place at the offices of Veye Yo, a Haitian rights
organization in Miami. The local organizing committee in Miami can be
reached at HYPERLINK "mailto:wfys2005 at yahoo.com"wfys2005 at yahoo.com. 

 


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