Missions

The Bolivarian Missions are a series of social justice, social welfare, anti-poverty, educational, electoral and military recruiting programs implemented under the revolutionary government of Venezuela. They draw their name from the historical Venezuelan hero, Simón Bolívar.
Aims of the Bolivarian Missions have included the launching of government anti-poverty initiatives, the construction of free medical clinics for the poor, the institution of educational and literacy campaigns, the enactment of food and housing subsidies, and the transformation of the original "endogenous nuclei of development" into a military nuclei of resistance against what Chávez describes as "US imperialism". The Missions have overseen widespread state-supported experimentation in citizen- and worker-managed governance, as well as the granting of thousands of free land titles to the formerly landless poor and indigenous communities.

Mission Barrio Adentro (Spanish: "Mission Into the Neighborhood") The program seeks to provide comprehensive publicly-funded health care, dental care, and sports training to poor and marginalized communities in Venezuela. Barrio Adentro features the construction of thousands of iconic two-storey medical clinics — consultorios or doctor’s offices — as well as their staffing with resident certified medical professionals. Barrio Adentro thus constitutes an attempt to deliver a de facto form of universal healthcare, seeking to guarantee access to quality and cradle-to-grave medical attention for all Venezuelan citizens.
Mission Barrio Adentro has drawn international praise from the Latin American branch of the World Health Organization and UNICEF. In addition, Saudi representatives have visited Venezuelan neighborhoods in order to study the Venezuelan public clinics; Saudi officials are considering implementing a similar program in Saudi Arabia. However, the program has drawn continuous criticism from the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

Milagro Mission: This mission performs free eye surgeries for low-income citizens. It started in July 2004 as an agreement signed between Cuba and Venezuela. At the beginning only Venezuelan patients were serviced, but now it has been extended to other Latin American countries. The types of operations conducted include: cataracts, pterigión and ptosis palpebral.

Mission Robinson (launched in July 2003) The program uses volunteers to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to the more than 1.5 million Venezuelan adults who were illiterate prior to Chávez's election to the presidency in 1999. The program is military-civilian in nature, and sends soldiers to, among other places, remote and dangerous locales in order to reach the most undereducated, neglected, and marginalized adult citizens to give them regular schooling and lessons. On the first anniversary of Mission Robinson's establishment, and to an audience of 50,000 formerly illiterate Venezuelans, Hugo Chávez Frías stated in the Teresa Carreño theater in Caracas that “it was truly a world record, in a year we have graduated 1,250,000 Venezuelans". On 28 October 2005, Venezuela declared itself a "Territory Free of Illiteracy", having raised the literacy rate to a UNESCO-verified 99% (the standard for a country to be considered free of illiteracy is 95%) by graduating 1.4m Venezuelans from Mission Robinson.
The name "Robinson" was given to the Mission in remembrance of the pseudonym adopted by Simón Rodríguez (1769–1854) during his exile from Spanish America.

Mission Sucre (launched in late 2003) The program provides free and ongoing higher (college and graduate level) education to the two million adult Venezuelans who had not completed their elementary-level education.
Mission Sucre was originally referred to as El Plan Extraordinario Mariscal Antonio José de Sucre, shortened as Misión Sucre. Named after the 18th century independence leader Antonio José de Sucre, Mission Sucre establishes as a strategy the mass education and graduation of university professionals in three years, as opposed to the traditionally mandated five or more years. The mission is thus an attempt to popularize, reform, and expand Venezuelan higher education beyond its traditional role of mainly educating the children of élite and middle class Venezuelans. The program is thus geared especially towards the poorest and most marginalized segments of society.
In this mission, certain matters and subjects, such as foreign languages, are mostly left out of the curriculum. The program functions mostly at the margins of the Venezuelan tertiary education system, although several key institutions, such as Simon Bolivar University, have endorsed the program. For example, thousands of non-traditional, mostly low income students are currently undergoing training to become licensed physicians in a unique and accelerated curriculum.
Mission Sucre imparts tertiary education; other educational missions include Mission Robinson (for instructing the illiterate) and Mission Ribas (for obtaining secondary studies, classes, and graduation certificates).

Mission Mercal (officially launched on April 24, 2003) The government has set up subsidized grocery stores in a state-run company called Mercal. At present some 11.36 million Venezuelans benefit from Mercal food programs on a regular basis. At least 14,208 Mission Mercal food distribution sites are spread throughout Venezuela, and 4,543 metric tons of food are distributed each day. Mission Mercal stores and cooperatives are mostly located in impoverished areas and sell generic-branded foods at discounts as great as 60%. While the company is heavily funded by the government, the goal is to become self-sufficient by replacing food imports with products from local farmers, small businesses, and cooperatives (many of whom have received microcredits from Mercal). This endogenous development is central to Chávez's stated goal of non-capitalistic development from the bottom up.

Origin:

Mission Mercal - The antecedent operations to Mission Mercal began operations following the economic hardships following the strike/lockout of 2002. Up until that period, Venezuela's food production and distribution systems were primarily managed by large national corporations, a situation homologous to the present reality in Western nations such as the United States or Europe. As most corporations supported the strike/lockout, which was aimed at politically damaging Chávez, most of the food-related corporations joined the protests and ceased their operations. On the April 25, 2003 broadcast of the television show Aló, Presidente!, Chávez expressed his outrage at Venezuela's lack of food sovereignty and the resultant vulnerability to the agenda of major food corporations, which was manifest in closed supermarkets, growing malnutrition, and food shortages. “This offensive served us a lot because we learned from the imperialism’s attack, from the Venezuelan oligarchy, and from those who were supporting the aggression against Venezuela and who would liked to have defeated us with hunger. [We learned] that we did not have a gram or a grain of anything, of food reserves. Before any natural, political or social disaster, Venezuela did not have then food reserves," Chávez stated.
Afterwards, in the depths of the oil shutdowns and general turmoil of 2002, Mission Mercal's reach expanded rapidly. The Armed Forces were integral in providing logistical support in moving, procuring, warehousing, and distributing food. Military bases and supply depots were used as food supply nodes, while military barracks became storage centers. Chávez acknowledged this by stating that "the army of Venezuela took to the street, gave of themselves and made the task easier with their technology, their human resources, their means of transportation and their installations for storing food.”
With initially only three Mercals (markets) and two warehouses, Mission Mercal (following its permanent and official inauguration in 2003) quickly multiplied to the point where 12,500 Mercalitos (mini-Mercals), 13,392 Mercals, hundreds of cooperatives, 31 Supermercals (mega markets), and 102 vast warehouses comprised a sprawling distribution system serving millions of barrio dwellers.

Mision Hábitat ("Mission Habitat") has as its goal the construction of thousands of new housing units for the poor. The program also seeks to develop agreeable and integrated housing zones that make available a full range of social services — from education to healthcare — which likens its vision to that of New Urbanism.

Mission Vuelta al Campo ("Return to the Countryside"; implementation announced in mid 2005) Mission Vuelta al Campo seeks to encourage impoverished and unemployed urban Venezuelans to willingly return to the countryside.
Prior to the Chávez administration, Venezuela's rural areas have seen substantial economic disinvestment, depopulation, and abandonment ever since oil wealth discoveries and extraction commenced in the early 20th century; as a consequence Venezuela now has an urbanization rate of more than 85% (far higher than the average for both Latin America and the Third World and is, despite its vast tracts of highly fertile soil and arable land, a net food importer. The Ley de Tierras — "Law of the Lands" — was passed by presidential decree in November 2001; it included the creation of a Plan Zamora to implement land reforms, including redistribution, in Venezuelan agriculture. Underutilized or unused private corporate and agricultural estates would now be subject to expropriation after fair-market compensation was paid to the owners. Inheritable, inalienable, and at times communal land grants are also gifted to small farmers and farmer's collectives. The rationale given for this program was that it would provide incentives for the eventual and gradual repopulation of the countryside and provide "food security" for the country by lessening the present dependence on foreign imports. There are three types of land that may be distributed under the program:
1. government land,
2. land that is claimed by private owners, but whose claims the
government disputes,
3. and underutilized private land.
To date, the Chávez government has only distributed the first two types of land.
Mission Vuelta al Campo fits into this context by seeking to facilitate the willing migration of urban residents back to the countryside in order to receive the benefits of these redistributions. The Chávez government desires that, with increased small-scale farming and ranching by formerly poor, mostly slum-dwelling Venezuelans, both increased economic opportunities of the poor as well as the food sovereignty of Venezuela may be secured.

Cultura Mission: The Cultura Mission Foundation, which is ascribed to the Ministry of Culture, was created as an alternative for reinforcing the national identity of citizens in the Venezuelan territory. This initiative is framed in the process of decentralizing, democratizing and broadening the Venezuelan culture, with the goal of providing academic and employment alternatives for the population.

Mission Identidad - This program provides Venezuelan national identity cards to facilitate access to the social services provided by the other Missions.
Misión Identidad mainly seeks to ease the process of obtaining an ID card. Venezuela has had a national system of ID cards since the 1950s, and these ID documents need to be renewed every 10 years. Foreigners living in the country also need to possess an ID; this foreigner's ID would be equivalent to the U.S. alien registration card (or green card). In Venezuela, under this Mission, it is absolutely forbidden to ask any money for this document, and foreigners who comply with all the legal requirements can legally obtain one. Possession of this document is required before one can vote in Venezuelan elections.

Misión Guaicaipuro (launched 12 October 2003) The program is carried out by the Venezuelan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources; the program seeks to restore communal land titles and human rights to Venezuela's numerous indigenous communities, in addition to defending their these rights against resource and financial speculation by the dominant culture. The mission is eponymous with the famous Venezuelan indigenous tribal chief Guaicaipuro, who was instrumental in leading native resistance against Spanish colonization of Venezuela.

Vuelvan Caras (Mission About-Face) It has as its objective the transformation of the present Venezuelan economy to one that is oriented towards social, rather than fiscal and remunerative, goals. It seeks to facilitate increased involvement of ordinary citizens in programs of endogenous and sustainable social development, emphasizing in particular the involvement of traditionally marginalized or excluded Venezuelan social and economic sectors, including those participating in Venezuela's significant "informal" economy. The mission's ultimate goal, according to Hugo Chávez, is to foster an economy that brings "a quality and dignified life for all." In January 2006, Chávez declared that after fulfilling the first stage of the mission, the goal of the second stage will be to turn every "endogenous nuclei of development" into "military nuclei of resistance against American imperialism" as part of a continuous program to create "citizen militias".

Piar Mission was created to provide the small mining industry with five axis contemplated in the Nation's Social and Economic Development Plan (Economic, Social, Political, Territorial and International), without altering the environmental equilibrium. This policy aims at transforming the old production relations, to put an end to the appropriation of the most productive mining areas by transnational companies and to also put an end to the plundering of our national resources and tax evasion.

Mission Arbol (Mission Tree, announced June 2006) – seeks to recover Venezuelan forests, with plans to plant 100,000 trees in 5 years. The project is also to involve the rural population, in an effort to stop them harming the forests through their slash/burn practices by promoting more sustainable agriculture, such as growing coffee or cocoa. The projects aim to achieve this through self organisation of the local populations.

Mission Ciencia ("Mission Science") launched February 2006– includes a project to train 400,000 people in open source software, and scholarships for graduate studies and the creation of laboratories in different universities.

Mission Florentino was a Bolivarian mission to coordinate the populace to vote "No" in the Venezuelan recall referendum of 2004 to keep him in office. The organizational centers of the Mission were named Comando Maisanta, as the ideological central headquarters (election brigades) for those who wished to keep Chávez as the President of Venezuela for the remainder of his presidential term.
The mission's name was inspired from a poem by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba entitled "Florentino y el Diablo (Florentino and the Devil)" in which a singer, Florentino, is tempted by the Devil to join him. Chávez claimed that reading the poem reminded him of the political situation in Venezuela at the time and encouraged his supporters to follow the example of Florentino fighting the Devil (those who were going to vote in favor of removing him from office). The name of the "Comandos" came from the Caudillo Pedro Pérez Delgado, great grandfather of Chávez and nicknamed "Maisanta", who fought as a guerrilla fighter against Juan Vicente Gómez for control of the country during the early years of the 20th Century.
On June 2004, Chávez announced that the campaign conducted by the Mission Florentino for the referendum will bear the name of "Battle of Santa Inés". The campaign will have the intention of reenacting the battle fought in 1859, in a town near the city of Barinas, in which Ezequiel Zamora lured the government army of the west into an area where he could defeat them in a counterattack. Chávez referred to Zamora's enemies during the Federal War as members of an oligarchy and, in the same way, to all of those who wished to vote against him in the Referendum.

Madres del Barrio Mission has the goal of supporting needing housewives and their families, so they can overcome extreme poverty and prepare to defeat poverty in their communities by incorporating social programs and missions, promoting support within the community and providing a financial allowance.

Mission Miranda - The program establishes a Venezuelan military reserve composed of ordinary Venezuelan citizens given light arms to defend the territory in an eventual invasion by foreign forces. Arms purchases intended to supply the program (including the acquisition of 100,000 russian AK-47 rifles) has provoked criticism from the U.S. and Colombian government over what seems to be an unnecessary increment of weapons in the hands of civilians. The Colombian government has also expressed concerns over the possible lack of control over the destiny of the weapons and the potential sell of the rifles to the FARC, since their guerrilla use the same AK-47 model of rifles.
Misión Miranda, as it is called in Spanish, was named in remembrance of Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816).