Paper short abstract:

Through the ethnography of the everyday life of how people experience the socialist Bolivarian revolution in a Venezuelan village, this paper looks at how the economic model of 'desarrollo endógeno' and its cooperatives, are getting incorporated in the traditional economy of a rural village.

Paper long abstract:

Through the ethnography of the everyday life of how people experience the socialist Bolivarian revolution in a Venezuelan village, this paper looks at how the economic model of 'desarrollo endogeno' (development from within) is getting incorporated in the traditional economy of a rural village. The Bolivarian Revolution is an ongoing mass social movement and political process which has been active in Venezuela since the late 1990s. This socialist revolution led by the charismatic president Hugo Chavez is, among other things, promoting a change in the productive system of the country by reviving vernacular products and resources at the very local level. This vernacular economic model is rhetorically opposed to neoliberalism and it promotes a social economy based on values such as cooperativism, solidarity and shared property. The local economic units of the 'desarollo endogeno' are the cooperatives. This paper looks in particular at how local people react to the creation of cooperatives in their village and how they understand and experience the Bolivarian economic model in their day-to-day lives.