Minutes of the Business Meeting
Section on Venezuelan Studies (SVS)
Dallas, March 27, 2003

submitted by Cathy A. Rakowski, Secretary

Leo Ledezma opened the meeting by welcoming everyone present. Twenty six people attended.

We then held a eulogy for Janet Kelly, who died the weekend before the meeting. Rosa Amelia González and Dan Levine spoke about Janet and their many years of friendship and work with her.

Cathy Rakowski reported on membership and funds. As of March 12, there were 75 members enrolled and we expect to get between 10-20 enrolling at the Congress. Many past members have been unable to renew given the currency exchange controls in Venezuela. As of March 12, there was $1822.90 in our account. This is after paying out $500 to cover expenses of the “Jornadas Visión de Venezuela” conference held in Maracaibo in June 2002. The cost of the food and coffee/tea at the business meeting totaled $846.16, leaving at least $976.74. By the end of the year, we should have about $1200 in the account if membership achieves past averages of 125 a year.

Cathy reported on the Section elections. We sent ballots to everyone who had paid dues for both or either of 2002 or 2003. This was about 120 people. Fifty people voted. Leo Ledezma received overwhelming approval to continue as President of the Section. Elizabeth Nichols received overwhelming approval to continue on the committee as a member non resident in Venezuela. Carlos Blanco was elected as a new committee member resident in Venezuela. All those present ratified the outcome of the elections. Leo asked all present to acknowledge the contributions of outgoing members Luis Gómez and María Pilar García. Committee members are:

Leo Ledezma, President/chair leo_ledezma@tamu-commerce.edu (18 mo. term)
Cathy A. Rakowski, Secretary-Treasurer rakowski.1@osu.edu (18 mos remaining)

Members resident in Venezuela
Emperatriz Arreaza earreaza@luz.ve (18 mos remaining)
Mauricio Perez Badell  mperezbadell@cantv.net (18 mos remaining)
Raquel Gamus raquelgamus@hotmail.com (18 mos remaining)
Carlos Blanco carlos.blanco@attbi.com (3 years remaining)

Members resident outside Venezuela (18 mos remaining)
Daniel Hellinger hellindc@webster.edu
Kimberly Morse kmorse@mail.utexas.edu
Ana Emilia Leon emailleon_a@utpb.edu
Elizabeth Nichols   enichols@drury.edu (3 years remaining)

Margaret Martin has agreed to continue as our Web Page Manager mmarteen@umich.edu
Margaret was unable to attend LASA 2003. So Cathy announced that Margaret had successfully completed her PhD and then read her report on the web page and on the svs political discussion site that we maintain on Yahoo. Highlights of her report:

The svs-pol on Yahoo has grown over the last 18 months. I created it in August 2000 to replace another discussion board that was never really used by our members. The frequency of posts to svs-pol varies with events. In April 2002, we had 71 posts, 6 the next month, and then back up to 106 in December 2002 and 108 in January 2003 during the strike. The list has been very useful in generating discussion and passing along information from different news sources. It is an uncensored list, but use is restricted to members of SVS only and registration is through invitation (to new members as they join) or by requests submitted to grupos.yahoo.com. At present there are 42 members. There were some questions regarding etiquette during the December and January posts, but no one has been kicked off the list of censored. The rules are simply to not threaten or harass fellow list members and to engage in civil discussion on Venezuelan politics.

The web site could use an overhaul. We have averaged 6000 page requests a month. There were some peaks in April and December 2002. In December we registered 1407 requests during just the week of the 22^nd through the 28^th. Our users have changed over time. We used to get a large portion of users with .edu addresses. Now they are predominantly .com and .net addresses (we only see the domains, not the full address). Of the country addresses, we continue to see Venezuela with the highest usage, followed by Canada and Europe (with Netherlands consistently the highest). The majority of our traffic is now referred by search engines, google, yahoo and msn rather than through the UT LANIC site. The LANIC site still directs between 20 and 50 clicks a month.

The pages that see the most use continue to be the websites page and the membership list. The info about how to join the section and minutes from past meetings are helpful in orienting new members and providing history. Some of the other pages, such as the “research” page and the “calendar” page could be eliminated or rethought. People can get more timely info about calls for papers, conferences and jobs via e-mail lists directly from interested parties.

The Venezuela mirror currently is offline. With the passing of Janet Kelly, who sponsored the site at IESA, we would need a new sponsor if we keep it. However, there is no evidence that it has been used regularly. The search engine on the mirror was almost never used, whereas reports on the one at Michigan show it is used a lot.

Cathy added a comment on the reasons for the mirror site: 1) it might be easier for those located in Venezuela (which we no longer believe to be true) and 2) for political reasons, we didn’t feel comfortable having the sole site located in the U.S. During the following discussion, there was no support for continuing the mirror site.

 Leo reported on activities from the last 18 months.
        1. We sent a letter to LASA President Arturo Arias signed by all members of the SVS Executive Committee and 24 of our members. The letter was in response to Arias’ statement on Venezuela published in the LASA Forum following the April 2002 “coup.” The letter offers the expertise of the SVS and its members for any future consultation that may be needed on Venezuela. We also invited Arias to check out the svs-pol site and discussion. Arias never even acknowledged receiving the letter. Leo will present a new copy to him at the meeting of Section Chairs to be held the day after the business meeting. (He did this and Arias apologized for not having responded and said they he will do so shortly. He said he had to rush off to Guatemala after receiving the letter and then forgot about it.)
        2. We tried to get permission for a special session on Venezuela go discuss the coup and aftermath. The LASA program committee said we would have to give up one of the two sessions that we already were sponsoring (which had been voted for among several proposed sessions submitted to the Executive Committee). Subsequently, we learned that the program committee had allowed someone else to organize a special session. This raises serious questions about the role of Sections.
        3. We asked LASA to delay counting the number of members to assign number of sessions for the next LASA Congress. We argued that exchange controls had seriously lowered our current membership. (In the Chairs meeting, they stated that the LASA Council had agreed to delay the count until September of this year.)
        4. We held a conference in Maracaibo for people unable to attend LASA because of cost. It was organized by a group led by María Cristina Parra and Emperatriz Arreaza of LUZ and it was held at the university. (See report below)
        5. Leo has continued to seek out information on how to facilitate exchanges between faculty in Venezuela and other countries. He discussed his own experiences organizing such exchanges through his institution. Because our time was short during the meeting, he will think of ways to brainstorm about this through a discussion site or on our web page.

María Pilar García read the report on the Maracaibo conference and, since she was there, she added information on comments made by participants. Major points from the report (which will appear in its entirety on the web page) are:

Las Jornadas Visión de Venezuela, un proyecto de la Sección de Estudios Venezolanos, se llevaron a cabo en la ciudad de Maracaibo, los días 13 y 14 de junio de 2002, en el Auditorio de la División de Estudios para Graduados de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales de la Universidad de Zulia. Se contó con el patrocinio de dicha Facultad, la cual cedió el espacio, así como proporcionó el apoyo logístico necesario (pautas publicitarias en distintos medios regionales, organización del presidium, refrigerios, etc.). También patrocinaron el evento el Consejo de Desarrollo Científico y Humanístico de la universidad y Espacio Abierto, Cuaderno Venezolano de Sociología

Hubo cinco paneles y 21 ponencias. El Comité Organizador decidió poner los trabajos presentados en un disco compacto para entregarselo a los participantes y enviar algunos a algunos centros de documentación y bibliotecas. Así se hizo. Todos consideraron que fue todo un éxito cuyo costo fue de Bs. 477.940,18.

Everyone present agreed that the colleagues from Maracaibo are to be congratulated on the success of the conference and recognized for their hard work to make it happen.

María Pilar proposed that another conference take place, this time in Caracas, because of the high rate of absenteeism among Venezuelans and venezolanistas on the Dallas program. This would be a II Jornadas Visión de Venezuela. There was considerable discussion of the idea, reasons why it would be a good use of Section funds, and great enthusiasm for pursuing the idea of a series of post-LASA conferences as a service to venezolanistas. María Pilar and members of the Executive Committee were asked to look into the feasibility of organizing another Jornadas, possible dates and sources of support in Venezuela.

Leo adjourned the meeting and invited everyone to stay, have snacks, relax and chat with each other.