 Hello everyone. Welcome to our forum on our sister city Puerto Cabezas or Bilway. And we'll be discussing also what is a sister city foreign policy compared to US foreign policy. And so we'll look at Nicaragua and with Peter Lukowski at Venezuela. So this meeting is sponsored as you know by the Vermont Institute for Community and International Involvement. So before I go on, I'll just say we'll keep people, there's 21 people on here. So we'll keep people muted until after each speaker, if that's okay. And then Beth Sacks will sort of keep raising their hand or have questions and we hope to get a good discussion going. So I'm not sure everyone knows that Burlington has many sister cities. We have Bethlehem and a rod that we heard about last week. Burlington, Ontario in Canada, Hong Foo in France, Moss Point in Mississippi and I think Peter had a lot that Peter Clavel had a lot to do with that. Then one in Japan, one in Yaroslavl. And we even have a sister lake, which involves the exchange of biologists between Lake Champlain and Macedonia and Albania. But tonight, we're starting with Dan Higgins, who many of you know, a longtime traveler to Portugal basis. And in fact, I would call him and Jane, really our ambassadors to port. He's promoted them to us and us to them and brought many visitors to our town. Now, if we had been able to see the little video, we would know at the end that it it asks for money from people here in Burlington for to help for the hurricane recovery. So could you start with that, Dan, and just tell us how much was raised last fall to send to Portugal basis? I can, Robin, but I think just before getting into that for people that aren't that familiar, I think you ought to put that map back up and talk about why that part of Nicaragua is very different than the other part of Nicaragua. And that comes out in the story of what happened with the raising the money too. All right, here we go to the map again. I think yes. Yes. So this is an illustration from a children's book, a wonderful children's book about the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. And it's a fantasy, fantasy, fantasy full map. But you can see the purple area up there, the mosquito region, and running down the coast. That is a part of the country that until the 20th century wasn't really considered part of Nicaragua was much more closely related to Great Britain. It was a protectorate of England for a long time. And there's a very different narrative that runs down that side of the coast from the Minagua side. And it was in 1895 that the government in Minagua sent the military in to occupy that part of the country. And there's still a lot of resentment and a lot of what's going on today. The underlying dynamic of what's going on over there has to do with the idea of what autonomy is. And so Burlington, without really knowing much about the coast, in, I'll make it simple, in 1984, in sympathy with the Sandinista Revolution, wanted to have a partner in Nicaragua that was a little friendlier relationship than what the Reagan administration was doing at the time. And through some mysterious means, Burlington became connected with Partica Basis. And suddenly we discovered that we were related to a town that wasn't particularly pro-Sandinista, that really didn't like the government coming in and telling them what to do. So that the economy has been much of what the sister city relationship has been built on over the years. And I just wanted to have that map up there so you could see that what we're talking about. And then I'm happy to talk about the what happened with the hurricane relief. But I think this is a good way to start thinking about Burlington's relationship to a part of Nicaragua that's really very different than most people's idea of Nicaragua. Can I ask a question, Dan? This is Sandy. Sandy Barrett. Hi. How are you, by the way? Okay. So what language has spoken there? First of all, they're Native Americans, aren't they mainly in that area? It's indigenous people. The main group is the Speaks Mosquito. It's Mosquito Indian. But over the years, starting in the 1600s, a lot of Africans have arrived there, both escaping from slavery and Jamaica and so forth. So there's when we first started going there, there was a very large Creole population, Creole meaning Africans, African Nicaraguans who spoke a kind of, they spoke English, but they call it Creole English. They were a big part of the population. Mosquito was what most people spoke. And there was very little Spanish. And that was in 1984. And it's slowly becoming more and more Spanish as time goes on. Does that answer your question? Yeah. And I think it points out, though, that in other words, what was the conflict, or maybe you're going to get into that, what was the conflict? They did not accept Managua as their government. It was kind of a separatist movement. Or what was going on there? Well, before the before the Sandinistas before 1980s, Samosa family was the government. They didn't have a big role in telling people how to behave. I mean, they would they were mainly concerned with money and they were, they were giving off they let they let many Puerto Cabezas was formed by a series of North American companies. And it was they were given the rights to create the town and to exploit bananas, lumber, gold, all of the exploitative kind of things that were starting the 1920s. And many of the people were happy with that period because they had good jobs. I'm not talking about the earlier than 1920s at that point. The Samosa people didn't bother people much. The Sandinistas came in and had a different model of creating this new country that was based on kind of Marxist model. And and did not the people on the coast were considered inferior. They were considered backwards. They didn't fit the image of a modern nation. And the Sandinistas were trying to incorporate the coast into their model of what the Sandinista vision was. And so there was a lot of conflict. And you may remember in the 1980s, a lot of the mosquito people had to flee. They fled to Honduras. They had their villages burned down by the Sandinistas. They eventually came back. There's been negotiations going on since then. And I'm just saying that that dichotomy still exists. Yes. Okay, thank you. Could you tell me something about that? You've you were down there when the when the war ended. And I recall one plane ride you were on where they were all they coming back gorillas from both sides. Yes. No good. Welcome, Peter. Thank you. With you all. So Robin just started by describing the many relationships that Burlington has had. I, Portica basis is the longest lasting relationship, the first sister city program that the city had. And I think Burlington's approach to sister cities has always been, it's about people to people changes. It's not about government. It's not about politics. It's about people. And we learned that how important that was very clearly when we discovered that no, this is not a Sandinista stronghold, but there are countries here. And so we immediately abandoned that notion that this was a Sandinista sympathy movement to say no, this is about getting to know people that we don't know, and giving them an opportunity to get to know us. And so it's been very rich in that respect. And most of the sister city programs, they go up and down. And some are more active than others. Portica basis in large part due to Dan and Jane's involvement over the years continues to be quite active. And as Dan will explain, it's been very active in recent months when we've raised monies to help them in the recovery from a two for two hurricanes is slammed into Portica basis one on November third and the other on November 16, destroying or seriously damaging more than 15,000 homes. So it's really devastating blow to them. But we've we've learned a lot from them over the years. But we've also it's given us some insights into the politics of Nicaragua that we did not have before. In the trip that Dan was alluding to was a journey that I first met shortly after being elected mayor. It was in 1990. And there had just been a change in government where a Tega had lost an election. And there was it was a period of apprehension and concern. And anyway, so we arrived in Managua. I was with the Doreen Kraft and Marvin Fishman. And we traveled from Managua to Portica basis, but it was on a military style plane in half of the people on the plane. And, you know, they did not have your typical seats, but there were benches on each side. And half the plane was filled with with Sandinistas, who were returning home. In the other half with Contras, returning home in these four gringos in the mix of it. And they all had guns. And they knew each other from years gone by some of them had been in the bush for years. But they did know each other. And there was a lot of back and forth a little bit of tension. But mostly, folks were just happy that it seemed like there might be a period of peace. So that was my first experience traveling to Portica basis. I've been there about five, six times. And there's been many rich exchanges with the city of Burlington. And we've learned more from them than we've given to them. So it's it's it's it's an exchange. It's not a humanitarian program, although part of our program has involved humanitarian aid, because we obviously have much more than they do in terms of resources. But some of the richest experiences were the exchange of little league teams that I helped organize. And we sent a team of kids from Burlington down a Portica basis with coaches about 25. And we had to raise a fair amount of money to make that happen. Then we invited them to come visit us. And they obviously didn't have the resources to do that. So it involved another fundraising drive. But you know, 25 kids and coaches from Portica basis arriving in Burlington was was quite a scene. And many of these kids, many of them mosquito kids had never been in Monago say anything about Burlington, Vermont. And so it was a shock for them. And they stayed in homes and was quite an experience. But we've exchanged over the years, musicians and firefighters, we can talk about all the programs. We once sent them a fire truck. They had a very depleted fire equipment, and we sent them a fire truck and the nursery program, which Robin and others are far more familiar with than me. But it's been a very rich program. And I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to be part of it. And I continue to be active these days as a member of the board of the sister city program. And I do hope to get back there. Let me ask a question. Because on a certain level, yes, it's people to people. But on the other hand, you have to have a relationship with the mayor, the two mayors have to have some sort of connection. And I've become aware of this in the last few years, because we've tried to have a sister city with Africa, and with Bukavu Burlington to Bukavu, the Congo. And, you know, the problem is, who is the mayor there? And Mira Weinberger was quite hesitant of allowing something to happen. Maybe after the election, things will change. But that, so you, we have, with particular basis always known the mayor and sort of had official relationships with him. I think it's important that there be, there be recognition from government to city government, because one gives the program credibility. And two, it also gives a continuity. You know, the energy will flow both in terms of the volunteers participating in the sister city program, but also the interests of mayors will vary from election to election. So this stamp of approval of the city is important. But it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is the people to people connection. Burlington does offer modest support for the program. It's it, but it's not enough to fund any significant programming. I think each city sister city program, three of them, I believe get $2,000 per year each and it's been at that level for for for a long time. But you also need a filter. I know many times, when I was mayor, I was approached by folks saying, we want a sister city with so and so and so and I said, I will not even entertain that unless you can demonstrate to me that there is interest within our community to establish such a program and there are folks that will be engaged and active in the sister city program in the in the community that you're proposing be our sister city. I need to know that that there is interest grassroots as well as official interest at that level. And many times when you raise that question and put it's push it through that filter, that that's the end of it. So yeah, you know, it's easy to have a symbolic sister city and to adopt a resolution that says Burlington will be sister city with such and such a community. It's more difficult and challenging to sustain relationships over a long period of time. And to do that, you have to have interest and commitment at both ends. Robin, could I make a comment about that? Because when you were and I was a little bit involved in Bukabu, we did talk to Mayor Weinberger and he was he was supportive, but he said what Peter said, he said, you're going to have to have a group in Burlington that wants to sustain it that has because the mayors of course can't do it by themselves. And that was his feeling was that we didn't have a strong enough group behind that idea that he regarded as sustaining, but it's not a dead idea. I mean, I think it's a great idea to have a connection with Africa. And I think we could do it again if again we had a group that would sustain it. And half of the half of the sister city and sister lake programs that Robin mentioned at the beginning no longer exist. I mean in the official records, yeah, they probably exist, but I guess I would be kind and say that they're dormant. And the reason they're dormant is there's not interest in some cases. It's lack of interest in Burlington side. In other cases, it's lack of interest on the other. It's too bad because I think the idea of sister lakes is really a beautiful idea, but you have to get the biologists and the technical people interested in sharing their knowledge and finding it. Let me just give you a brief story about that. So I was a member of an international NGO, the Institute for Sustainable Communities. I was visiting for the first time not knowing that I would live in Albania for four and a half years. I was visiting Albania and Macedonia. I met this mayor in Macedonia, the mayor of Skruga, Macedonia, and he says, Peter, I want to be your sister city. And there was no interest in awareness on the part of Burlingtonians about Macedonia. So I said, hmm, how am I going to deal with this one? So the more we talk, the more it became obvious to me that his real love, his passion was for the lake, Lake Okra, that spectacular lake found by Macedonia and Albania. And I said, mayor, I'm not certain about the sister city, but let us try something different. Let us create a sister lake relationship, because at the time there was a Lake Champlain steering committee. There was a lot of activity in how to manage our lake among two countries as well as two very different states. And so we explored that idea. I came back and working with the Institute for Sustainable Communities, we were able to get some private funding. And it became quite a program allowing for exchanges that were initially around science and lake management, but later cultural exchanges as well. And that's one of those programs that is dormant today. But I think that there's enough logic to it that I would not be surprised if it is re-energized at some point in time. That would be great. Well, can we go back to Dan and from Dan go to the larger question of Nicaragua and our official relationship, the government's relationship with Nicaragua? Yeah, Dan. I will also tell you how we made decisions raising money. And I hate raising money. I hate material aid. We try over the years not to have that north-south idea of sending material aid to the southern part. But we try to do things reciprocally and recognize, as Peter said, that we've got a lot to learn from people in Puerto Cabezas. So bringing people up here, having them, I remember the dance team that went to all the schools and did dancing and so forth. We tried to have that model. Once in a while, you have two hurricanes hitting a town within two weeks of each other and it called for material aid. So we raised, to answer Robin's question, we raised initially $10,000. That's when that was our main, we had a GoFundMe site and we had people sending checks. And the checks came in at $7,600. The GoFundMe site PayPal thing came in at $4,800. So if you add all that up, you've got about $12,000. Now the question was, what do we do with it? Because as Peter was pointing out, we have a real, we have not always had good relationships between the mayor's offices. Sometimes mayors, either in Burlington or in Puerto Cabezas, haven't even been interested. And so the people, the people connection has been going on for years. And we have a lot of people, Burlington is very well known in Billwee. If anyone goes down there, the three or so TV stations are going to ask you to go on and talk because we know them all and we help start them. So it gets kind of crazy. Suddenly they all want an interview and find out about Burlington. So we also have been, we have a semi-official relationship. Now the mayor right now in Puerto Cabezas is Henry Herman. He was the mayor when Peter was the mayor. They have a good relationship. Peter brought Henry to Burlington. Peter's spent many hours in Henry's restaurant down there. And so it was a no-brainer. Now Henry only became the mayor in this last election. The mayor before Henry, who some of you know came to Burlington in 2016, his name is Rinaldo, he represented a different party. We're not going to acknowledge the party thing, but we decided early on to give half of the money officially to the Alcaldia. $5,000. Alcaldia. Alcaldia is the mayor's office. That's his mayor's office. That's the mayor's office. And from all reports, the government did a much better job this time than it had done when Hurricane Felix hit seven years ago or whenever it was. So that felt good. So we gave them half of the money to them. The other half, we split up among four organizations, and I'll just say what they are. One of them was the, it's called the Kupia Kamiaslika group. It's a mosquito organization put together by a guy named Juan Parlos Acompo as an umbrella for eight or nine different organizations to deal with restoration in the communities, getting plants, getting seeds into the communities. It's a mosquito organization. Second one was Robert Mayn has a group down there. He works with disabled divers, and these divers are all in wheelchairs. There are 400 or so divers going around Puerto Cabezas because of the bends. They have to dive to make a living. They don't dive with charts. They dive more than they ought to, and they get paralyzed. And he started a school for them, a woodworking school, which is really interesting, where he's got all these divers in wheelchairs learning to put, oh, he also is bringing up 100-year-old logs from the rivers. They got dropped there during the period of lumbering. He's bringing them up in there. It's an amazing wood. These are first growth trees. And he's got these divers learning how to use their skills with this beautiful wood to make things like cheeseboards. I don't know what the... And you might add that they're diving for lobsters, which are one of the exploited resources up the coast. Yes, and they're having to dive very deep now, and there are over 400 of these guys that have gotten disabled. And they're still diving to make a living. So the woodworking shop was one. The Nitya White is a long time women's group, and there's been a lot more domestic violence after the hurricane, of course, with people losing their jobs and so forth. So we sent them $1,500. And then the problematic one is we sent Ronaldo, the mayor who some of you met, who unfortunately is from a different party, and he was not able to pick up his money at the bank. And I think some of that has to do with what the Nicaraguan government has now. They have a new law called Foreign... What's it called? Foreign... Foreign Agents Act. Foreign Agents Act. And so money coming from the United States, coming from outside, is very carefully regulated. So Ronaldo has not been able to pick up his money, and it hasn't been returned to us either. So we're waiting on that, and then we'll find some other way to get it to him. But those were our choices. Peter, you might know a little more about it. I see they got an email from the Alcaldia that they did get their money. Sure. So, you know, about 10 days ago, we sent money to City Hall, to the Alcaldia. And it took a number of days, even there, it took a number of days for that money to pass. And today the email says, acknowledges receipt of it, and says, Mary, Mayor Henry Herman deeply thanks you for the contribution to the indigenous and Afro-descended people of the municipality of Portica Basis. And he assures you that it will be used in the best way, which will be verified when we send you the report backed by photographs of the use we give up to these funds. And in my discussion with the Mayor, it was agreed that the best way that this money could be used was to help to restore the livelihoods of the indigenous people. Mostly Mosquito Indians, they were heard by these most recent hurricanes because they lived on the coast, they're fishermen and women. And this was their livelihood. And there were others that farmed, and their farmlands were flooded. So, a combination of farming and fishing, their economy was just devastated and they lost their nets, their lines, their fields were flooded. So, the money that is raised in Burlington will go directly to these people to help restore their livelihood. But just, you know, without getting political about it, since the protest of April of 2018, where people in Nicaragua rose up to protest the Ortega government's decision to reduce pensions, they really, really have curtailed the opportunity for people to express their opinion. The freedom of express, the freedom of press has been tightly brought in. And one of the results was the creation of this Federal Agents Act, which makes it very difficult for non-governmental organizations, unless they're aligned with the government to receive funds from anybody. And they're asking nonprofits to pledge that they will not participate in any protests of government actions. So there's a lot of politics behind this and as Dan and I have discussed, raising the money was the easiest part, getting it to the right people, has been challenging. But I think we're there. Okay, well, let's transition a bit now. You brought it up to Nicaragua and the U.S. government's attitude towards Nicaragua. I mean, I think that there was, during this difficult time, in 2018, American money flowing into groups and encouraging groups to stand up to the government. There was also a grassroots movement against precisely the changes that the Sandinista government was making on. Was it pension funds or I forget the actual issue that got things started. But I think now there might be some people on this call who know and feel strongly about what happened in 2018. I know the sister city program had a very lively exchange going on. And just to point out one statistic that I was looking for, like, how have the countries of Latin America dealt with the COVID mortality rate? Okay, the highest, the country of Latin America with the highest mortality rate is Peru with 125 or something per 100,000. The three countries with the lowest COVID mortality rate, the lowest is Cuba and next is Nicaragua and next is Venezuela. Somehow these countries that have been hit by U.S. sanctions nevertheless are able to provide better healthcare or better care all around to their constituents. So if someone would like to talk about Nicaragua and then we will move on to Peter in Venezuela. Sandy? Yeah, no, I just wanted to ask the question because what Peter and Dan have described is a sister city relationship that's based on face-to-face contact between people and basically diplomacy, a kind of a citizen diplomacy. So I would like to at some point maybe not now ask, for instance, toward Venezuela, that certainly has not been the case. So there's U.S. policy has dominated in Venezuela and that is simply, it seems to me, hostility. So the sister city relationship seems a way around the hostility of the federal government, of the federal governments establishing peaceful relations and friendship between people. And I just wanted at some point in this debate to contrast that with what the U.S. foreign policy has been particularly toward Venezuela and the other socialist countries because I guess the Sandinistas still would define themselves as socialists. I don't really know that, but certainly foreign policy toward Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia has not been a friendly relationship. And at some point I would like to hear from Peter Likowski about that. But if you want to, I mean maybe you asked a different question, Robin, about Nicaragua. So maybe we should start there. I'd like to say something about Robin, what you said about the health care in Nicaragua. If you don't mind, this is fantastic people, by the way, thank you so much for organizing this. What a great program. And you're so inspiring the relationship you've had over so many years. And I have had a couple of students drop in to listen. Robin, what I do know about COVID in Nicaragua right now because I'm teaching a class and every Thursday, Carmen, my journalist friend is zooming in from Managua and talking about the situation there. And my students actually asked about COVID last week. And what she said was that the government has done almost nothing, but that the people themselves have organized and gotten masks and washing their hands. And another thing I do know is that, I mean, the government's position has been to deny that COVID exists. And so there have been a lot of deaths. It's just they haven't been documented. And the government has been hiding the information. And there have been reports in the media, internationally, and in Nicaragua, of midnight burials and just hiding the numbers. So I don't know, of course, Cuba has a much better medical system than a lot of countries. So I don't doubt that they're doing better with COVID. But Nicaragua, the truth is, people don't know how many people have died. But it's pretty dire situation in hospitals, according to my friends that are there. Well, let me just bring in another issue, which is that Daniel Ortega is apparently going to run again this fall, I believe. They're having elections and this will be, I mean, he's been in power a long time. That was part of the issue two years ago, that he should not have run, that he's been in power too long and should hand over the reins. And so probably there will be more conflict in Nicaragua, in the Managua, and the larger cities. And I mean, my feeling is the United States should just stay out of it, although I doubt that that's going to happen because we have ways with CIA and so on to get money to the people that we want to have who will disrupt things. So let's just pay attention, careful attention to what happens in Nicaragua. And unless there's another question here about Nicaragua, I'd like to bring Peter Likowski in, who as some of you may know, because he's been on our call way back when Vicky got started and we were meeting face to face, talking about Venezuela. He's been there a number of times. And so tell us what you're thinking and feeling about it now with the sanctions, especially being more onerous on Venezuela than any other country. In fact, the United States under, I believe, Biden still recognizes that other guy as being president. Is that accurate, Peter? Okay, you're muted. De-mute. Yeah. There you go. Thank you. Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. They're still recognizing Guaido. He's slipping into it. A little louder. I say they're still recognizing Guaido. That's his name, the other guy. But he's slipping into oblivion. He has so little credibility anywhere at this point that he's really, he'll soon be forgotten, I think. I think I wanted to actually, rather than so much focus on the United States' relationship to Venezuela, there's really a story that, I mean, that you can read about in New York Times and whatever. But the one thing that you can't find out about is another aspect to Venezuela, which I think is really the crucial issue. And that is the Venezuelan popular classes, I guess, is the best way to put it. I mean, class is pretty fluid in a place like Venezuela where the employment has been very sketchy for many, many people. And classes are just not easily divided into peasantry and proletariat and so forth. But there's a huge mass of people who have been in the old days were basically just forgotten and ignored. And they, in the course of being ignored in the pre-Chavez years, in those years of the Fourth Republic, as they call it in Venezuela, they did a huge amount of organizing of themselves. In the barrios, they basically, in many barrios and Caracas and other cities too, actually, people organized to defend themselves really from the police for criminals and or criminals, of course. And the, in general, communes, collectives of all sorts are really quite a thing and have been for a long time in Venezuela quite spontaneously and with no particular ideology, except there really has been a good deal of ideology in a sense. Venezuela has a long tradition of revolution and Bolivar is alive. The name that comes up a lot, the name of Samora, who was led a rebellion and is around the same time as our Civil War, is, people know who he is. There's pictures of him on the wall, along with Bolivar and Chavez and Ali Primera, a folk singer who no one's ever heard of here, but he's the great hero there. And these are revolutionary figures, and that's very much a tradition in Venezuela. And they're popular revolutionary figures, in other words, liberation, decolonization. Bolivar was famous for, one of the famous sayings was, I'm quoting from memory, but it was essentially, the United States seems to have been destined by Providence to play Latin America in the name, with misery, in the name of freedom. And that, of course, rings true right now. When Chavez was elected in 1999, he was immediately opposed by the local bourgeoisie, what he referred to them as a rancid oligarchy, which had struck home, really. They were a small group, and of course those who served them, and including a labor aristocracy in the oil company, that the Pedevesa is called. They formed a kind of an era, well, an oligarchy really, and the rest of the people were ignored and lived in extreme poverty. That rancid oligarchy began opposing Chavez the day he was elected, and by 2002 had a coup. It lasted about two days, 20, 47 hours to be precise. They kidnapped him and nearly killed him, but people rose up all over the country, in millions, literally, of people. They rose up and took the country back, and they had set them back, but they didn't give up. They had a terrific strike, an owner's strike, a lockdown, a lockout, I should say, tried to wreck the economy, and this was in 2002 and 2003, and it was a serious, serious blow. I mean, if you can imagine, every business in the country shutting down, all the stores, or at least in the East End, the rich part of town, closing down, and that was that, and so it was very hard, but people just, the world, the popular classes, ignored that effort. They just went about their business as well as they could, and eventually it fizzled. It simply, they couldn't sustain it, but by that time, Chavez had taken real control of the oil company and really went to town. I got there in 2005. I saw a country that was just coming out of that, plus a recall election, which Chavez won really by a landslide, and the country was, it was very, very poor, people sleeping in doorways in Caracas and other places, too. Beggarus in the subways, and one of the most striking things was that they have a street there in Caracas. It's kind of like Church Street, but about maybe two, three miles long, and it's about three times as wide, maybe, and it was completely filled, one end to the other, with street vendors, people with little, with iron poles and canvas tents, and they went, not just on the sidewalks, but all the way through it. I counted in one place, sort of a wide place. I think there were six rows altogether, from one side to the other of the street, and it was just people selling tube socks, and whatever they could get a bundle of and pedal them just to make a living. That was 2005 as a result of that lockout. By 2008, that was gone. It was, I could hardly believe it, actually. I was asking, where are the vendors? Well, mostly they have jobs now, I was told, but there are some around, but the government had made arrangements for them a little more dignified arrangements, and they weren't on the streets anymore. Nobody was sleeping anywhere in the doorways, and that was over. There were no beggars. They had really stabilized the economy, and it was very impressive. It was a time, actually, now it put a lie to the people who say that the government takeovers were inefficient, because it was a time of the most nationalizing, actually, that they did of businesses and factories. They were always, by the way, they weren't confiscated. They were always bought out. Chavez always did that, but it's never mentioned much that they were compensated. The constant opposition from the right wing, and also from the United States, has always been deeply implicated in all that stuff. The constant opposition, not just from the United States, but also from the local ruling class, I mean the bourgeoisie, the former ruling class, finally convinced Chavez, along with the logic of everything else, that there was no way, that they were going to have to figure out a way to create a socialism of the 21st century. And he started using that phrase, and he actually brought in some, he began, he was a very great intellectual person, actually, an incredibly brilliant person, and he pulled together a kind of international, a lot of great thinkers. People who really knew something about socialism, someone named Istvan Meserovch, Hungarian, he's quite famous amongst left, and another one, Michael Labowitz, for example, a Canadian, who had studied Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, two different models, actually, of socialism, and really understood how they worked and how they didn't work, and why they didn't work, and what do you have to avoid to make things work, and what they concluded was it was already happening, that what Venezuelan masses, basically, had been organizing themselves, and in fact, with the Chaves to government, starting in, actually, my first visit, I think, in their way, a process of going around to the neighborhoods and kind of regularizing land ownership in the settlements that had been spontaneously settled, they were just quite chaotic, they went around with surveyors and stuff, but after they figured out who owned what, and where the property lines were, they also, then they had people together, and people had had to reach consensus about that stuff, and they went on, okay, now, what do you guys need in this neighborhood? And neighborhood by neighborhood, they built communal councils, which turned into communal councils, and those communal councils were already starting to function, they had a different name at the time, but that's what they kind of turned in. The model was essentially a grassroots bottom-up model of a community, communal democracy, and I can't, I don't want to try to avoid the detail about it, but it's participatory and not representative. It wasn't the idea that you represent, that you elect someone like Peter Welch or whoever to represent you, that you have a spokesperson for the community, who's on a very short string, that they don't seem to be, the community can recall them any time if they aren't expressing the communities at that level, thoughts and opinions. And this has, this by the time I was there in, let's see, 2019, I remember sitting in on a meeting of a communal city coming to order, to organizing a communal city, a section of Caracas in the popular section that probably had about a hundred, I think a couple of hundred thousand people all together was three communes coming together to form a communal city. And the communes would be a couple of dozen in each case different, of course, depending, but communal councils, which are neighborhood large, sort of the size of a ward, maybe something on that sort, on that order, but in a very dense, dense city. And these, these the idea was to not just develop the political communities, but productive communities. And that's been right along as much as possible, people have done. The problem has always been capital, getting money from the state. When money was good, when the oil price was high, there was capital to be had. There was money to be, to be buying tractors for the, and the rural unions, and to be buying equipment to grow tomatoes under rooftop and things like that in the urban places. Not to mention, you know, just basic water systems and stuff like that. The- So, can I, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm wondering if, if people have any questions or if anybody wants to ask any questions. Because I would like to ask one. I don't know whether you'd- Go ahead. And I'll, I can, I can, that's fine. Go ahead. I want to really know then, I mean what you're talking about is sort of participatory democracy. Precisely. Values that Americans seem to share. Why was, why in your opinion, what, what position did the United States take toward what was going on in Venezuela? Well, I'll tell you, it's, I mean, it was, it's a challenge to hegemony. I mean, the United States has considered the United, Latin America to be the backyard and to be basically, well, it's decolonization. This is a, Venezuelans are very, very conscious of having been, having, having had a neocolonial relationship with the United States. They know exactly what the deal is. They know exactly how incredibly exploit if it was, they could see the disaster for the, for the popular classes, at least, what this paradise of, for the upper classes led to, of just peddling off the, the nation's resources, not just the oil, gold and so forth. They were selling it off, living very well off it and the popular classes were getting nothing and they could see that. And they are, they do not want to be part of the American empire. And right now you can, and you, you, I remember asking people, what, what if they do attack? What are you going to do? So we're going to take to the hills. That's basically what you hear in the city. They have actually have hills. I don't, I didn't get into the precise details of civil defense, but they're really, they, they're ready. They have, they have arms distributed around the country. There isn't, there is a popular militia. Even old people are in it. They don't necessarily expect to be out in the woods, you know, running around with rifles, but they, they're very helpful in doing things like distributing food and so forth as militia. They're doing business. I, I have a sort of a related question. Has the Madero government been able to diversify the economy enough from oil and gas? No, not a chance. It's been very, very difficult. And right now it's virtually impossible. I mean, it's impossible to get spare parts for the machinery they have. Everywhere you go, last time I was there, and I'm sure it's worse now, there were cars that's simply abandoned because they, there was not a, no hope to be able to get any parts to fix them. I mean, obviously there, there are ways to work around, but it's, it's devastating. Not to be able to get almost anything at all, including medicine. But Cuba figured that out. It's difficult, right? But with sanctions, I mean, what, what I think Peter is talking about are sanctions by the United States. I mean the United States could choose to be friends with Venezuela and actually lift the sanctions. But the sanctions are brutal and they're act of war and that doesn't make life in Cuba easier either. Yeah. Very difficult in both places. It's not that simple to do. Right now, to tell you the truth, the Venezuelans are willing to put up with an awful lot of, really, our friend William, who actually, some of you met with William Kamakaro, was just sending, just sent a bunch of photos of, you see, one of the things that they can't get is cooking gas. People use for, you know, propane or whatever it is and cooking gas cylinders. And that's just standard in Venezuela and most of Latin America too, as far as I've ever known. So they, they can't get it. It's just simply doesn't exist anymore. I mean, the upper class can, can buy it, but, you know, ordinary folks can't afford it very much. So they, they're inventing stoves. But Venezuelans are also, I mean, it's interesting. The, they're very, very sophisticated people in many ways. And they're very, very conscious of being ecologically, they know that it's bad to cook with for a whole population to use wood stoves to cook their dinner. But what, what are you going to do? So they have all kinds of clever stoves with attempts to be ecological, what they use for the fuel. They're doing what they can do, but they're doing it. And, you know, it's, it, it takes a lot of workarounds. But it, it says a lot about the desire to not be a colony anymore, to stand up for, well, I mean, you know, this is not unique to Venezuelans. People don't want to be ruled by, by people who are going to just basically exploit them. And that the level of consciousness there is just, well, it's encouraging. But the thing is, see the Maduro government, this is what I wanted to get to. And what I'm, what I'm really trying to get to is the relationship between these masses that I'm talking about, self-organizing masses that have, you know, have done really a, a, quite a job of, of increasing production. The peasants, communes, for example, are incredibly productive. But there's a problem. The, the government is essentially it, it, its model is, all it could really be, if it's the, the government of the Venezuelan state, which is essentially the best it can do, I think is a kind of social democracy, the kind of client relationship to people which is exactly what is, it's being forced into right now with the CLOP, the CLAP, which stands for, it's basically a feeding program, whatever, never mind what it stands for, it doesn't help any. It's basically a box of food as you get every two weeks. And it includes all kinds of products that you can sort of live on. And it really helps if you grow some of your own veggies and stuff. But at the same time, and that's what the government is doing. And that's all it can do at this point. But it's, this is in contrast to the peasant and, well, communal movement, which is doing Pueblo to Pueblo kinds of things, where peasants bring truckloads of vegetables into the city, and they have, they eliminate middlemen. And this, this whole economy is developing at the same time. But the problem is that the government is a government. And it had, it follows the logic really of governments. It's not all unique, not all the same. I mean, for example, last time I was there, I got to talk to people in the government, in the Ministry of Science and Technology, they're all into like the Conuco, which is like, we don't have any exactly like it, but it's a sort of a survival, vegetable garden that's traditional in that part of the world. And there's a word for it, Conuco. And they're all into that, learning from the peasants and all the wisdom of the people at the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture, which has a huge budget, is way more interested in industrial agriculture of all things. And maybe making, getting some of the land that was, well, reversing land, land reform for one thing and allowing the big landlords to push the peasants who have been producing on the plumberly idle land off and maybe turning it into industrial farms. There's a really intense conflict about that. And this is basically the government versus the communal, the government model, the Venezuelan state model of a social democracy essentially that is pretty comfortable with some sort of an arrangement with capitalism versus the model that is really the Chavezna model which is very popular amongst the popular classes, surely, I think a really, a majority and certainly solidly endorsed by about a third of the population, probably, if you do my own estimate based on polls and stuff. You see the conflict between the communal movement and the government, that's very interesting. Yeah. And the thing is, they both know they have, they can't live without each other. The government cannot directly attack or put down or dis, you know, dis the communal movement it created and it's theoretically, it's on the books. There's a lot of the communes that in 2008, Chavez was still alive. Chavez's last speech in 2012 was the main praise for a communal nada, communes or nothing. If we don't go for communal society, we're dead, we're finished as a revolution. That's basically what he told them that then he died, he was, you know, whatever the CIA did to him. Anyway, Could you speak about the sanctions? The sanctions, the sanctions are devastating. They're across the board. The lack of fuel was unbelievable. They're a completely internal combustion engine. They don't have a decent rail system in Venezuela. They need diesel and stuff and just like anybody. And if you don't have any at all, it's really hard. And, you know, it's been, it's very hard. And the only, it's creating starvation and, you know, a lot of things. The thing is, they say the sanctions, they're targeted against the leaders of the government. But really, that is just a, that it seems like, oh, well, you know, it's just that most terrible, you know, people in the government. Actually, talked to someone in government, actually, about that. And it was interesting what he said. He said, look, you know, they'll say so and so, the minister of such and such ministry, the top guy, they'll say, and it doesn't matter if it's true or not, it has no relation to reality. He's in our, he's a drug deal or, you know, whatever crime they want to put up to. And he's sanctioned. And so we're going to freeze his account and so forth. And he's on the books now as an international criminal. Okay. Now this ministry wants to buy, you know, several tons of something or other, from some country or from some enterprise. And it's, well, who's going to have to sign the, the sign off on it. Finally, the minister. Oh, well, what's his name? Oh yeah. He's on this list. He's an international criminal. I don't know if we want to do business here. Wait a second. Yeah. Okay. And that's, that's kind of the way it left that. Okay. So now that ministry has got to make some kind of work around to get an internationally, you know, company that wants to also do business with the United States and doesn't want to have to run across some laws about dealing with criminals and drug dealers. They have to figure out who else is going to run the ministry or what are they going to do? Lessons are really hard. And this is kind of bullshit stuff that, that the government, it's all hidden. It doesn't seem like it would be that bad, but it just, it eats away that the country's abilities is just not playing function. Peter, I think, does anybody else have any questions, Robin? Do you think it's getting a little late? Maybe other people would like to ask some questions before we wrap up. We can go on till about 30, I think, if we want. But yes, definitely. I see Charlotte there with a question. You want to demute yourself? I just wanted to say that, Peter, you wrote an interesting article for toward freedom about what was happening and then as well, has come home to roost because you dealt directly with claims by the opposition that the elections were fraudulently conducted. Do you want to say something about that? The first time I was there actually was in 2005 and it just so happened, I remember it so vividly because it was leading up to an election for the National Assembly at the time. And I remember Thursday evening, I was sitting in my hotel and I turned on the TV and the news was, wow, the electorate made negotiations and huge concessions by the government to the opposition to meet all their demands about the election mechanics. They said, no, it's going to be a fraudulent and they withdrew. And it was like, what? To last second, but everybody could see why that they knew they were going to really, really lose and that they didn't want to be humiliated. So what they did was they just pulled out and saying that it was going to be fraudulent. Well, these are the same elects. I mean, I was there in the elections. I could, you know, I was actually met someone from the OAS with an election observer. Yeah. They look good. Everybody said it was fine election, including Jimmy Carter talks crazy about the system. Doesn't make any difference. New York Times continually talks about the elections being fraudulent. You know, it's a media, it's a media campaign. And there's a degree. I could say some more things about the media war. It's pretty intense. The coup was led by the Venezuelan media, the 2002 coup. They congratulated themselves publicly for having created it with fake news until it was over. And then they suddenly pulled me. What? I didn't do that. But they were very proud for the few minutes that it lasted and taking credit for having done it. So much of what you read virtually all of that stuff. It's just as fake when they say it about Venezuelan elections as when Trump says it here. It's what I meant about coming home to roost. It's the same strategy. You demonize and disqualify your opponents anything to bring down that government that is defying being a colony. I mean, what if this catches on? That's it did. The first thing that Chavez did was reorganize OPEC and raise the price of oil. And that was like, what? Who gave him permission to do that? Well, that was, you know, you can't get away with that. You know, non-aligned movements, stuff like that. Organizing all those other the pink tide. They have to bring it down. It's just part of what an empire cannot stand for. To do it. Yeah. All right. Any more Charlotte or? I just wanted to follow up on the Nicaragua aspect. Who was the young woman who was on before? And she said that things are really dire in Nicaragua. She's still with us. No, I think that was Trish O'Kane, maybe. Yeah, yeah. She just signed up. And what what is her affiliation? Oh, I know she does work at UVM. I was in touch with her last summer. She's very concerned about, I believe, the government of Nicaragua. Like Robin said, I believe her politics are is that the Ortega administration has been in power too long. And that the people have real concerns and that the demonstrations are calling for, I guess, for an end to Ortega and that she, while she supports that movement, she doesn't seem to want the United States to intervene either. Okay, interesting. And the reason I raise that is because this became a matter of controversy, certainly for toward freedom. And I came in as the guest editor, not having been part of that controversy, but didn't review it. And there was an article that was published that just painted Nicaragua in the worst possible light, saying they were terrible, they hadn't treated the people right, there were doctors up in arms about it. And yet Robin says that the number of deaths is on the low scale, along with Venezuela and Cuba. And so I think we have to be very, very careful when we hear these types of criticisms. I just want to read, there was a response from Kevin Zeiss, who was a well-known activist and sadly died very recently. But before he died, he wrote a response to the article that had appeared in toward freedom. And you can, by the way, if you go to towardfreedom.com and go over to the blogs, you can find that article under the title, a message to our readers. And Zeiss presents an entirely different view. And I just want to read just three sentences. He says, you know, they've been trying to deal with the effects of COVID-19, but Nicaragua suffers two additional handicaps. One is it is a subject, it is subject to U.S. and European sanctions, which severely limit the aid it gets from the broad or from multilateral bodies. The other is an internal opposition, which aims to use the pandemic in its later attempts to destabilize the government and turn opinion against it. And there is ample, ample news of that, especially because elections are coming up. They want to get rid of Ortega. And I know Ortega has come under criticism, but the sense I got are, there are countervailing statistics that it's done quite well for its population. And so one thing that I've been urging to people who write for tort freedom is, be very careful in how you present the information, be aware that the U.S. government is going to try to discredit the Ortega regime in any way it can, is the same way it did to Venezuela. And if you're going to, you know, just be very careful with the documentation. I mean, that's the best we can do. Okay. I'd like to bring us to a larger view and about the pink wave that someone referred to, because actually the wave seems to be growing in terms of the election in Bolivia and also now recently in Ecuador. These seem to be very fair elections as far as anything I've read in Ecuador, the guy who's following in the footsteps of the progressive guy, Corero, who cannot be in the country because there's a lawsuit against him, which is one of the ways the elite sidetracks potential candidates is putting a lawsuit on them as we are doing here and maybe in the United States on a certain former presidents to make it so that he cannot run again. Well, that's what happened to Corero. And but this new guy is apparently young. Actually, he's a former banker, but he's a progressive person. And there has to be a runoff because he didn't get the total of over 40 or 50 percent. But I think this is an interesting swing. And there seems to be no contest with those two elections. I don't know if there are other elections that are coming up that could be positive for Latin America. So the Ecuador one has complications about the the second and third place people are who came within a few thousand votes. And there's a huge controversy there. Yeah, yeah. And but I should you should also mentioned about the whole thing about the way that Able was overthrown essentially a couple of years ago, or a year and a half or whatever. Right, right. That was all about fake news about election fraud. And it was all fake news. And but it was accepted completely. The OAS did did that. That was that their fraud that they perpetrated. So, you know, it's just it's just a tactic. Look, I'm going to have to go also. But I want to thank you. This is Sandy again. I'm sorry to interrupt again, but I do have to sign up for now. But I did want to again contrast the difference between what Peter is talking about in terms of U.S. foreign policy is basically a lot toward so especially socialist countries. Sanctions warfare overthrow the government versus what I think Peter has tried to do as well as the others from the sister city is trying to reach out to these countries and say, regardless of what our government is doing, we want to make friends with with people. And that's Peter, you've done a really remarkable job on that. Peter, which Peter are you talking about? Peter Lukowski has done a remarkable job on that and making friends and contacts with Venezuela while the United States continues to be hostile toward Venezuela. Peter has gone out of his way to make friends with the Venezuelan people. And I really thank him for that as well as the people in the sister city programs who've also tried to over the years tried to make friends with people that our government defines as enemies. And certainly we the people do not regard anybody probably in the world as enemies. So anyway, I wanted to thank Peter and Peter Clavel and Dan Higgins. Yeah, and I my question is after the pandemic is over, are we going to have a resurgence in our sister cities or will it sort of Peter out to use another Peter? You know, I hope that there will be an enthusiasm to reiterate all of these next year or the year after. In a very interesting way with the pandemic and with Zoom, we've been able to have our sister city meetings with Zoom with people in Nicaragua which we were never able to do before. So there are some real benefits to to to Zoom as much as I don't love it. It's opened up conversations. That's fascinating. An interesting question. I don't think it's been there's been probably more activity in the last year than they're unusual. And there will continue to be that I'm sure even if we can travel there. But I invited someone to join this tonight and she wrote me and she said she's sorry. She's on the road. Can't but yeah, I wanted to have someone here representing Puerto Cabezas. Well, we'll do another another that would be very good to do another one with any time. It would be terrific. So let me say, oh, well, all right, Charlotte. And then I will say what what's happening next week. Maybe Sandy can tell us. Okay, Charlotte. Yeah, just real quickly about Nicaragua again. I think that it behooves us to play very close attention to what's going on there because of these upcoming elections. And this very serious effort of the U.S. to get rid of those socialist Sandinistas. But by the same token, I've had to deal with mistakes that Sandinistas made in dealing with Indigenous people on the Atlantic coast. And from what I can best understand, they've learned some of their lessons. But there are some Indigenous people who still feel very strongly that they're not sufficiently living up to the the Atlantic coastal people's desire for autonomy. And it's something to be very careful because of course we want to we want to support Indigenous rights. The whole question is has to what extent has the Sandinista government tried to improve on its relationships? What I read fairly recently is that it has and that attacks on Indigenous properties that were carried out by settlers, possibly not well enough surveilled by the government have stopped. And they're opposing the views within the Indigenous communities as well. So all we can do is try to understand the the conflict that Dan set out at the beginning. There are two very different places. It's tricky getting, but the most important thing for us is try to determine what are facts. What's the real story there? And I want to mention too what's happening next week, but also I want to mention that with us tonight is Musa Isakan and Chris Isak from the Palestinian and Israeli Sister City program and Burlington. The Burlington Bethlehem Arad Sister City program, which is unique. It's a tripartite arrangement and it is the same idea is making peace where the governments are too busy making war on each other. But this is a citizen to citizen exchange in the Middle East that is very valuable has been existed since 1991. So we thank them for being here. But the last thing I want to mention is next week we're going to have at the same time Professor Andrew Buchanan. He's a historian from UBM and he's a Cold War historian and a historian of World War I and II. But he's going to be talking next week about China. China, he's going to say China yesterday, China today, and China in the future. A very controversial relationship right now that the United States has with China. So anyway, thank you again and Robin. I'll turn this back over to Robin. Yeah, all right. Well, thank you all for taking part. Are there any final comments you want to make? And when this is done, I will push the stop record button. This has been recorded and will be on CCTV in the next few days. Thank you. Very good discussion. Great. We learned a lot. Thank you. I'd like to learn about your sister city program. I mean with with what Bethlehem. Yeah, but that was last week. Oh, I missed it. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. We'll do it again. We'll do it again. It's it's recorded. Yeah. Okay. I'll check that. Send me the link. Send me the link. Okay. Okay. All right. So thank you everyone. This was one. Go. Don't have a rum and coke if you can and think of course.