"In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical."
— Naomi Klein

"Me he refugiado en el saber y así he perdido mi alma.
El dios de Livia"
— Israel Centeno

"The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."
— Simon Bolivar

"Aclaro que tu corazón tiene en sus venas
lo más cercano a mi espuma
por eso acepto bañarte tantas veces vengas
y a limpiarte los oídos
con el algodón de estas palabras.
(...)
En todo caso sos un ángel
y estas son mis dos heridas:
el inicio de tus alas."
— dennis avila