Big Cooperative Push in Venezuela
by Chris Kraul
August 25, 2006
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MARGARITA ISLAND, Venezuela - For 20 years, Eustacio Aguilera's family owned the Hotel Residencia Guaiqueri in this tourist destination and free-trade zone.
He hired the cooks, the maintenance men and the cleaning women. But now when he asks them to prepare a meal or tidy a room, he is careful to treat them collegially. The staff may do menial work, but they are also co- owners.
"Before we had a boss. Now we are the bosses," said Hermogenes Garcia, a longtime maintenance man at the Guaiqueri.
The hotel is among 100,000 cooperatives formed in Venezuela in the last two years that are the centerpiece of President Hugo Chavez's new socialist model to create jobs and redistribute this oil-rich country's wealth. They now employ 7% of the country's workforce, a number that could grow to 30% in a few years, government officials say.
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Nevertheless, Guaiqueri Hotel owner Aguilera sees mostly the benefits of Chavez's policy. Located near the beach, his hotel was going broke last year and he was faced with the option of either selling or forming a cooperative. He settled on a hybrid form called a co- managed cooperative in which he turned over a 45% interest to workers in exchange for a $500,000 loan to refurbish and remarket the property.
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