Counter‐hegemonic regionalism and higher education for all: Venezuela and the ALBA

Abstract

This paper employs new regionalism theory and regulatory regionalism theory in its analysis and theorisation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) as a counter‐hegemonic Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) regionalism. As (initially) the regionalisation of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, ALBA is centred around the idea of a twenty‐first century socialism that replaces the ‘competitive advantage’ with the ‘cooperative advantage’. ALBA, as a set of multi‐dimensional inter‐ and trans‐national processes, operates within and across a range of sectors and scales whilst the structural transformations are driven by the interplay of state and non‐state actors. The Venezuelan government's Higher Education For All (HEFA) policy, which is being regionalised within an emergent ALBA education space, assumes a key role in the direct democratic and participatory democratic processes upon which a bottom‐up construction of counter‐hegemony depends. HEFA challenges the globalised neoliberal higher education agenda of commoditisation, privatisation and elitism. Rather than producing enterprising subjects fashioned for global capitalism, HEFA seeks to form subjectivities along the moral values of solidarity and cooperation.

Keywords:

• ALBA
• UNASUR
• globalisation
• regionalism
• counter‐hegemony
• higher education

Notes

1. I would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for doctoral and post‐doctoral funding (Award Numbers PTA‐030‐2003‐00417; PTA‐026‐27‐1902), without which this research and its dissemination would not have been possible. A total of 16 months of critical political ethnographic research were conducted in Venezuela, Nicaragua and El Salvador between 2005 and 2009. Critical discourse analysis has been used on official documentation – over 400 public and non‐public ALBA‐related documents from 2000–2009 (declarations, agreements, strategy papers, etc.), and over 60 semi‐structured and open‐ended interviews with officials, coordinators, legal advisors, academics and civil and organised society actors. Translations from Castilian originals are my own.

2. The Castilian acronym ALBA means ‘dawn’. It counter‐poses ALCA, the abbreviation of Area de Libre Comercio para las Américas, FTAA. Venezuelan president Chávez first coined the term at the Association of Caribbean States Summit in December 2001. ‘ALBA’ initially stood for Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, was reformulated as Bolivarian Alternative for Our America (Nicaraguan adhesion documents, January 2007), Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (5^th ALBA Summit, April 2007) and has stood for Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America since the Sixth Extraordinary ALBA Summit in June 2009.

3. Only Colombia is in a more privileged geo‐strategic position, as it additionally has access to the Pacific Ocean, and a land connection with Central America.

4. Over 700 delegates from social movements and indigenous peoples, as well as representatives from over 40 African, Asian and European countries were reported to have participated in the meeting (see http://www.movimientos.org/noalca/albasi/show_text.php3?key=16022).

5. See http://www.cubacoop.com/cubacoop/misionmilagros.htm.

6. See Muhr (2008a) for a theorisation of Venezuela's model of democracy that complements representative democracy with Marxist‐rooted direct democracy and rights‐based participatory democracy. In the case of Honduras, the attempt to introduce such mechanisms provoked the 28 June 2009 coup d'etat by sectors of the oligarchy and the military.

7. Bachiller is the holder of the bachillerato, the qualification required to enter tertiary education.

8. See http://www.cubacoop.com/cubacoop/yosipuedo.htm.

9. Quotes are from Managua Declaration background documentation, obtained from MPPES on 3 September 2009.

10. Clearly, more systematic research would be necessary to consolidate this argument. For instance, the stated concept (‘integral education’) may equally have emerged from a different national policy. The purpose of the example is to illustrate possible governance processes and mechanisms more generally.

11. The missions co‐exist with other social justice mechanisms. For instance, the number of targeted government higher education studentships (grants) was increased from 51 thousand in 1998 to 350 thousand in 2008. Over that period, the student loan system was progressively abolished (MPPES 2009b, 28–9).

12. See Muhr (2008a) for substantive and methodological details of the case study.