La démocratie participative entre subordination et autonomisation politique. Les Conseils communaux à Maracaibo (Venezuela)

Abstract

The "Bolivarian Revolution" of the president Hugo Chávez put the concept of "protagonic and participative democracy" to the centre of the transition towards the "Socialism of the 21st century". The community councils created in 2006 materializes the will of the central power to allow "the organized people to directly exercise the management of the public policies and the projects faced to answer the needs and aspirations of the communities, in regards to the construction of a society of equity and social justice" (borough council law, 2006). Since 1970, the dominant political parties had integrated the neighbour associations into the puntofijista domination structure. The objective of the constitution of the Popular power is to break with the clientelists practices inherited from the former period and to lay the foundations of a new relation between the society and the State. How does occur the reorganisation of the power relations in the political local space with the revolutionary transition of the neighbour associations to the community councils ? How the community projects decided by the community councils and financed by the State are socially distributed inside the local political space ? More generally, do the community councils take part of a process of political empowerment of the local communities ? The observations and the interviews, carried out in two barrios of the Maracaibo periphery and in the Foundation for the Development of the Community and Municipal Promotion, tend to show that if the protagonic and participative democracy opens a process of political empowerment in the development and execution of the community projects, this new political architecture is built on a subordination to the reproduction of chavista hegemony and the re-election of Hugo Chávez to the presidency of the Republic.

Keywords

• community councils
• subordination
• empowerment