Rosangela´s Consejo Comunale

Rosangela lives just outside of the city of Merida, and works at the language school I am attending. The following is what I leaned about corruption in Venezuela and and her community council.
Rosangela explained that corruption has allways been a huge problem in the Venezuelan government. She said that people giving jobs to their family members and friends, no matter if there are better qualified applicants, is part of the corruption. The government beaurocracies have allways been full of excess workers. She told me that there were two doormen in the government building where her mom worked, and for a door that was always kept open. This is a problem that Chavez is trying to solve with the community councils, by putting the recources and power into the hands of the community members so they can use the money for what they need. However, it will take time to decrease the amount of corruption in the country. One reason is that the same values of glottony are in many individuals on the local community council level as well.
Rosangela´s community council was given seventeen credits to distribute. The committee who´s job it was to decide who in the community needed the credits most, had one strong and popular man, and about six other people. Ten of the credits went to family members of the influencial man. This she said, is an example of corruption in community councils.
Another example she described, was that one of her cousins recieved an agricultural credit to grow berries. However, she used the credit to buy things for her house instead. Lack of oversight is a problem of the community council activities as well. However, these problems can be worked out. For example, one of her cousins has been upset abou the the unequal distribution of credits and so she is organizing people to solve the problem. The law allows anyone to propose a vote at any community council meeting, and vote out a comittee member. I can imagine social pressures causing hang-ups in rooting out corruption in small communitys. However, at least it is a smaller scale problem, and perhaps faster to solve than voting out a mayor.
Rosangela´s experience was valuable to hear, becasue I had been wondering about these issues while I was in the community council meetings in Montecarmelo, where the committee was in the process of deciding who would recieve how much money. Rosangela was positive about the community councils over all, and said that she thinks that her community will be able to vote out the corrupt committee member.