Misión Madres Del Barrio: A Bolivarian Social Program Recognizing Housework and Creating A Caring Economy in Venezuela

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This thesis began as a project about Misión Madres del Barrio; and it quickly transformed into a glimpse of the Bolivarian Revolution underway in Venezuela. Misión Madres del Barrio (MMB) is one of the pioneering social programs in Venezuela that is confronting the poverty that years of underdevelopment, debt crisis and corruption have left behind. Misión Madres del Barrio is best described as a short-term community directed public assistance program that incorporates poor mothers into political organizations, socio-political schools and other social programs that tend to basic primary care. Ultimately the Mission provides training and no-interest loans for the formation of small-scale cooperative businesses for mothers in extreme poverty. The overtly anti-capitalist elements of MMB set it apart from other public assistance programs because the program re-defines labor relations, emphasizes the value of unpaid domestic work, and provides the skills, training, and financing for poor women to become self-employed in small-scale cooperatives, as opposed to low-wage employment. MMB's emphasis on socio-political formation, political enfranchisement, basic primary care, and training and financing affirms that the cash assistance is only one element of the program. MMB does not actually remunerate women for housework, more accurately it is a complex poverty reduction program that examines the root causes of the extreme poverty of female -headed households and proposes a multi-faceted strategy for addressing it.