their own resources, to manage from the bottom-up and to make public policy. These are the fruits of the struggles that we have waged since the 1980s and 1990s, for example, for free tuition, which is now guaranteed by the Constitution. Again, I repeat, this process does not belong to Chvez; Chvez is simply a circumstance. He assumed a role in the process that has its own dynamic. A decade ago, people had no face, no voice. Now the people are speaking louder than Chvez. SS and JRW: What are the most dynamic forms of popular organization in this current period? JC: There are two types of organizations that are part of the revolutionary process: those that pre-dated Chvez and those that were born during the process. The organizations that we now call communal councils existed before under other names, such as the neighbourhood councils ( juntas vecinales ). People in the barrios established these organizations in order to resolve their basic problems. Now these structures help to plan where to put the infrastructure in a more rational manner compared to when some technocrat who sits in an air-conditioned office who has never set foot in the community makes all the decisions. The community members know, for example, where to put the stairs, where to put the football field. The second type of organization was born in the heat of the revolutionary process, such as the Coordinadora Popular de Caracas and the Coordinadora Simn Bolvar . There are also new