Ángel Prado: We want to take care of the Popular Power from the bureaucracy

He says that he was a little scared when President Nicolás Maduro proposed to him to be the new minister for the Communes. Ángel Prado refers to that last June 6, when the head of state arrived to visit the El Maizal Commune, located on the grounds of the Simón Planas (Sarare) municipality, Lara, where Prado was elected mayor for the 2021-25 period. In those mountains and valleys he was born; He learned with his mother to raise sheep, make conuco and sell preserves, with which he bought one of those first Nokias that had a white case, where an uncle called him to tell him that Father Rojas was organizing a trip to Cuba to participate in political training seminars.

“That day the President accompanied us to start the corn planting cycle,” recalled Prado, who minutes before had been called by Maduro to a brief meeting at the barbed wire fence that borders the commune's corrals. “It is time for you to leave the commune and take on other tasks,” the President reportedly told him in the presence of deputy Jorge Rodríguez, then head of the Viva Venezuela campaign command.

Within minutes, the President got into a Tiuna vehicle and began an improvised peasant march on the rural road that crosses El Maizal from where, with a megaphone in hand, he announced Prado's entry into the executive cabinet. “There were more women than men,” recalled the Minister of Communes during the visit to the Group's facilities. Últimas Noticias.

—What characterizes a commune?
—It is a popular territorial organization that founds a self-government structure. It is a call made by the same people in the community to work towards the political, social, economic and cultural transformation of a territory that has common interests, that has common problems and an idiosyncrasy, a culture, a community way of life, but from the commune it enters into a dynamic of popular government. That is, the community itself does the design. There are guidelines, we have a commune law, we have a very precise orientation from Commander Hugo Chávez, but also an alert from the commander and a mandate to create the commune in accordance with the interests of the community. It has a government structure, it has its community bank and the citizens' assembly functions as the highest decision-making body. The commune has its communal councils, with a demarcated area, with its name, with its RIF and legal status. In addition, it has its controller, planning and a production system.

—How many communes exist in Venezuela?
— Until now there are a little more than 3.000 communes. We are making a registry because they have asked us to create a system to manage very precise data from the communal councils and communes. There are more advanced communes, others that are reorganizing their scope, others that have already started in a very incipient way, but due to some motivation problems or internal conflicts, they are reaching an agreement, but they are already established communes that have been working for some time. There are some new ones, but others like El Maizal, El Panal 2021, March 5, in El Valle de Caracas; Five Fortresses, in the East; Altos de Lídice, in La Pastora; Che Guevara, in Mérida; Patria Nueva and Maisanta, in Barinas; There are many. There are some that are great references that are schools, but right now we have identified 4.505 territories, which we call communal circuits and where the popular consultation will be held.

—This Sunday the second popular consultation will be held. What are the main proposals?
— This consultation is going to be quite successful, it will achieve a high participation of our people. The first consultation could have been an expectation or something hopeful. There was a campaign by the Venezuelan right to try to position that to improve public services no one should be consulted. I live in a commune and millions of people who work in the communal councils and in the communes repudiate when an institution executes a project that has not even been discussed with the communes. We greet, we see very well and we like it when the institutions go to consult with the community and ask us what the priority is. In this case it is not an institution that is asking, in this case it is the people that are prioritizing. It is a proposal that the President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, launched and we accept it well at the base.

—What is the election process like?
— People make a prior discussion about their social problems, how they should be addressed, in what order of priority and they nominate seven projects to vote on Sunday, August 25. The one with the most votes will be the project that will have the financing to be executed in the short term in 4.505 communal circuits.

—What is a communal circuit?
—It is an aggregation of communal councils in an area. They are not recognized as a commune, but they have common problems, a common life, they just need to take the step to become a commune and in this phase it has been called from the communal circuit, that is, to get together to serve, to make proposals and serve problems, receive financing, that can help resolve internal problems in that area of ​​various communal councils and shape a territorial organization in a geographical area.

—Who identifies or convenes a communal circuit?
— They are convened by the Ministry of Communes. In reality, they are communities that know each other, that recognize each other, but that have not taken the step to work in a single organization. When the community councils come together we are stronger, planning is better, politics is consolidated, cultural and educational issues are worked on.

—Isn't this a government parallel to the mayors?
— The commune is self-government in a specific community. A mayor's office can coexist with a commune, a mayor can work with the community leadership. Now, if the mayor goes into terror and feels that the commune is going to challenge him for power and confronts the commune, then unfortunately the commune in the territory has control even of the vote, it has political control, electorally. For example, we lived an experience in a municipality where the National Government transferred a significant sum of resources for projects in the commune and the mayor made machinery, technicians, engineers available, he even also gave a financial contribution to complement the projects and that commune loves He loves that mayor, he supports him and at an electoral moment he is going to re-elect him. I have also seen, for example, in the Baralt municipality of Zulia state, where the mayor has prohibited the commune from investing the resources provided by the national government in the school that is deteriorated and has created obstacles because it is a regional school.

—Last April they carried out the first consultation. What progress have they made on those approved projects?
— I can guarantee that almost 60% of the projects have already been completed. We would have to go to deep Venezuela to see the happy faces of the people who have managed to access public services that for years, especially in this difficult situation of the country's economy, after we stopped having massive transfers in the community councils, specific problems of water services, health, agricultural roads, among others, have been resolved. Visits have been made by officials from the Federal Council of Government, the Ministry of Communes, mayors' offices and governorships who are going to advise, accompany and we see how a project was executed well and a closing process is carried out. That project had a second financing, that is, it had double the financing that was promised for the first consultation, which was close to 400.000 bolivars.

—Will these election processes continue to be repeated in the communes?
—This Sunday, August 25, we are going to vote to choose the second project that should be financed by the national government and once again the processes are accelerated to complete their projects, seeking support in all ways because at the end of November or December The President of the Republic announced that there will be a third consultation. Starting next year there will be four annual consultations. We are going to be constantly executing projects, especially in terms of public services that come to solve specific problems. The President has also said that he is going to launch a popular consultation to prioritize productive projects in the 4.505 circuits that we have and it is estimated that between 2025 and 2026, 6.000 communal territories will be consolidated, it is there and with the people there that is going to execute the nation's budget.

—On June 6, President Maduro, from the El Maizal Commune, approved a reform to the Organic Law of Popular Power.
— Yes, it is part of the laws of Popular Power that are being discussed in the National Assembly as the Law of the Communes. There are other laws that after August 25 we are going to start with a national discussion because, as the President said, we want to shield the People's Power, take care of the People's Power, the commune, the bureaucracy, the amount of procedures that sometimes exist and that prevent progress, prevent the faster work of a commune, especially in the issue of competencies, of management for economic programs and what we want is to facilitate the mechanisms because in the communes we have to go through so many bureaucratic steps to be able to develop our projects. Let this path not be so traumatic where sometimes the very superstructure of the State prevents us from moving forward more quickly, especially in the resolution of social problems, because in the end what the community wants is to see its neighborhood, its community, beautiful.

—In the electoral campaign, President Maduro assigned you a task with the issue of housing. What has been done so far?
—The president gave stewardship to the Ministry of Communes of those three million homes, which we are going to build in the next six years. We have already called the housing committees of each communal council to come together in the circuit, a communal circuit can have 10, 15, 17 or 20, and we will now form the great communal housing circuit in each of the 4.500 circuits existing. There, work begins based on priorities, who are the first families that should have homes, which are the houses that were left unfinished and that we must finish, which are the houses that should have benefits to improve roofs, windows, floors, some other housing services. We are doing a census study, how many families, how many people live in a home, how many are overcrowded. All of these are tasks that must be completed in the coming days and generate information so that we can present specific proposals to the President of the Republic. I take this opportunity to make a call to the Venezuelan people, to that community leadership and the people who require, who dream, who have the hope of having their home through the communal council of the commune, to continue organizing, to continue debating and to speak , analyze, think and write what this methodology should be like to build millions of homes.

—How will you divide up those duties as minister and person responsible for a housing plan?
—We are a single government and there must be centrality in President Maduro's cabinet and although the Ministry of Housing may have the resources, materials, methods to build, there has already been clear guidance from the President that each circuit, each commune organize its housing plan and that the Ministry of the Communes, in discussion with the people organized with the housing committees, design the policy or complement and in some way establish the new methodology and that it is through the Popular Power where we are going to develop the large projects, not only of urban planning, but of rural housing, of peasant housing, of housing in the neighborhood, located where everyone has their land and awaits their little house.

—What message do you send to the community members of the country?
— I ask the Venezuelan people to be very attentive to the defense of the homeland, let's read again, let's look again for the entire message of our commander Hugo Chávez, especially when he talks about the transfer of power to our people, when he called us to the popular organization , that we were protagonists of the great transformations in the Venezuelan communities and that we take into account that the revolution has enemies, that the Venezuelan homeland has enemies due to the fact that it has large reserves of oil, large reserves of many minerals, which today the imperialism, large transnational corporations and the bourgeoisie need to sustain their lifestyle. Venezuela has to take care of its territory, it depends on the patriots and, although it may seem unimportant for some right or left politician, we endorse and support President Nicolás Maduro in his decision to work with the organized people. A housing committee, a health committee, an agriculture committee, an economic committee, a community council, may be something that has little relevance for some people, but for us it is the organizational cell that multiplies, becomes millions. of organizational experiences in the country, we will be the solid base of the Bolivarian Revolution because we will not have another homeland, because another opportunity to be a government as common people, who live up there at the top of the neighborhood or who live there in the countryside more hidden where perhaps it does not reach almost anyone, where not even the media reaches. Today we are a government, we have the opportunity to decide on resources and how to solve this problem, because we are not going to have that in another system of government but in revolution.

Retail

• “The people have been empowered, we have avoided the mistakes that we could have made when the communal councils were born, which sometimes fought over a housing project, some contradictions were not resolved, they led us to waste time and some resources were devalued.”
• “The popular consultation is a democratic process that expresses the full freedom that we have in our country to make decisions and that denies and overturns that matrix of opinion that the enemies of the country and the revolution want or promote in the world that Venezuela exists. a dictatorship that does not allow us to make our own decisions.”
• “We must overcome our problems that we have faced, but we are not going to have another happy life, another life in complete freedom of opportunity and I am sure that with the Bolivarian Revolution not in political power, in this country unfortunately we are going to have a great demobilization".
• "From the base together with our president Nicolás Maduro we are going to have a strong impact not only on the political and social life of this country but also on the economic life of our country."