People's Democracy

New Revolutionary Currents Running Through The World

16th WFYS Inaugurated By Hugo Chávez

Chavez inaugurating the festival in Caracas on August 7.  DYFI president K N Balagopal is seated on the dais (third in the row from left)

VENEZUELAN president Hugo Chávez inaugurated the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS), which is being attended by 20,000 delegates from more than 140 countries. He affirmed that new revolutionary currents are running through the world. 

A spectacular artistic presentation with a strong national presence was the main feature of the inauguration for the event, which lasts until August 15, Prensa Latina reported.

Two hundred voices from the Capital Region Choir sang the Venezuelan national anthem “Glory to the Valiant People,” and that of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY).

The festivities kicked off with a parade of six horseback riders and the reading of the Monte Sacro Oath, taken two centuries ago by the Liberator, Simón Bolívar.

Next came a dance production by the “Diabladas” or “Diablos Danzantes” (Dancing Devils), from the cities of San Francisco de Yare in the state of Miranda; Naiguatá; Vargas and Tinaquillo, Cojedes.

The banners of the five continents, amidst a sea of flags, entered the Fort Tiuna Military Academy’s Courtyard of Honor previous to the parade of delegations along the capital’s Paseo de los Próceres (Promenade of the Founding Fathers).

A ritual cleansing was performed by spiritual leaders of the Wayuu, Kari’ñas, Jivi Ye’Kwana and Warao peoples, which, according to ancestral tradition, opened the ways and purified the festival.

The Arpa and Joropo Integral School from the state of Guárico, made up of more than 2,500 stringed instruments from the Venezuelan plains, performed “Alma Llanera” (Soul of the Plains), accompanied by the voices of Mariángela Linares, Reina Lucero and Cristóbal Jiménez, among others.

To the beat of that contagious music, 170 couples danced joropo as a preview to the entry of the Venezuelan delegation of 4,000.

The performance of “Canción Colectiva” (Collective Song) by emblematic Venezuelan singers such as Lilia Vera, Yadira Pirela, Jerry Vale and Gustavo Arreaza, was also part of the show.

After speeches by Chávez and Miguel Madeira, president of WFDY, the delegates danced the night away to the music of the group Madera.

This is the third time that this forum has been held in the Americas. It was previously held in Cuba in 1978 and in 1997.

CHAVEZ’S INSPIRING SPEECH

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez affirmed before the almost 20,000 delegates to the youth festival assembled in the Courtyard of Honor that there is a resurgence and dawning in the world, and “you,” he said, “are part of that wonderful rebirth.”

“I am deeply convinced that although the past decades were very demanding, there is currently a rebirth among human beings of the ideas of peace, equality and the struggle against the exploitation of human beings by other human beings,” he stated.

“The world needs, first and foremost, an ethical, moral and spiritual revolution that places as its Alpha and Omega, its beginning and end, revolutionary and social humanism,” he affirmed. “The planet needs a political revolution to bring about real democracies, supported by the people, and not the false democracies of the elite that talk about that concept every day while they undermine the rights of the people,” he added.

He also emphasised the importance of making an economic revolution capable of dismantling the perverse mechanisms of capitalist domination.

“We are all facing a huge challenge,” the president warned.  “It is a struggle for the salvation of our planet, threatened by the voracity of US imperialism, which respects no boundaries, given that it knows it is the most powerful economically, militarily and technologically.”

The United States has always attempted to own the world, “but from Caracas, we say that the owners of the world will be us, the peoples,” he affirmed.

Chávez spoke with optimism of the resurgence of progressive social leaders and movements throughout the world, after many hard years following the destruction of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialism. New revolutionary currents exist throughout the world, he noted.

He recalled that at this same time 60 years ago, the worst act of terrorism in history occurred.

“A true genocide, committed by US imperialism, it dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we remember those days with sadness, and pay tribute to the victims of those terrorist acts,” he commented.

He followed by noting, “Today in Venezuela, an atomic bomb is exploding for life; the youth of the planet are here, they have come all different ways to this Caracas, the birthplace of one of the greatest men of the continent, Simón Bolívar.”

The president welcomed the young people from all over the world and recounted how the WFDY was created six decades ago, at the end of World War II. Since then, he noted, extremely important events that showed the way have occurred, such as the Chinese and Cuban Revolutions.

“During those years, Che Guevara emerged, an eternal youth and an eternal inspiration, and the heroic resistance and victory of the Vietnamese people to demonstrate to the empires that they never have been and never will be invincible,” he emphasised.

He noted how during the 1970s, the hope of Salvador Allende’s Chile came into being, “besieged and bombarded,” and how afterward, the Soviet Union collapsed, and with it the counterbalance to the pretensions of the United States.

“Many hopes died, many projects and battles were paralysed, but they will not be the owners of the world; the owners of the world will be us, the peoples, who have decided to be free,” he affirmed.

Chávez congratulated the Venezuelan National Preparatory Committee for its high level of organisation and efficiency in preparing the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, “a real challenge for the country,” he commented.

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

The 16th World Youth Festival expresses a cultural richness which, merely through its existence, defies the imposition of a one-eyed approach, said Venezuelan culture minister Francisco Sesto.

In a statement to Prensa Latina, Sesto praised the role of the meeting in supporting mankind’s struggle for cultural diversity, and highlighted the contrast between it, and the US and its allies’ attempts to impose a single narrow view of the world through the entertainment industry.

In this way they try to negate peoples’ experience, the high official said at the end of the opening ceremony of the exposition “The Endless Island,” with 22 works from Cuban plastic artists.

Sesto also pointed out that the World Youth Festival is not only an expression of the struggle for peace, equality and a better world, but also a cultural expression of many the people who are now in Venezuela through their youth.

For his part, the Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, also present at the exhibition, described the youth festival as an extraordinary opportunity to become familiar with the culture of resistance, which has spread everywhere.

Prieto said the other side of the coin of notorious hegemonic globalization is a culture of friendship, and a growing awareness of the need for change permeating the world.

(Courtesy: Prensa Latina, August 10 & 15, 2005)