CARACAS, Venezuela - The rambling ride through steep hills and on amazingly small roads where dilapidated housing hugged the sides of cloud-blanketed mountains was one of the most harrowing aspects of my trip to Caracas as a delegate to the World Social Forum this past January.

A bridge that normally allowed traffic to and from the airport had crumbled not long ago. What normally would take a half hour was now two to three hours long. Entering Caracas you fall into a capital full of concrete buildings, car-and-bus exhaust, and noise. Surrounding it are the poor who’ve built their makeshift homes squirming up the cerros in almost all directions. Although it has its own flavor, heavily Caribbean, Caracas also reminded me of Mexico City, Guatemala City, San Salvador, Managua, San Juan - some of the other Latin American capitals I’ve visited over the years. There’s a feel, a look, a sense that all Latino nations seem to share, even as each one evokes their own energies, deities, tastes, and sounds.

The Spanish did not advance the culture there - it enslaved most of the inhabitants while forcing the rest to become Christians and subordinates to Spanish rule and power. In turn, the wealth of most of the Americas - including from massive deposits of gold and silver mines - were transferred to Europe, creating one of the vast sources of primitive accumulation that allowed Europe to develop the incipient capitalist economy into a world-wide phenomena and an age of conquest that became unprecedent.

I was part of the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign from the United States. Around 100 of us made it for the 4th World Social Forum that some reports claimed brought 300,000 people to the country. The US delegation was much larger, but not many were as interesting as the PPEHRC group. Here we had people who had been formerly homeless (some had built tent cities in Philadelphia); people who fought for health care in Ohio and Illinois; migrant workers from California’s Central Valley, including one who had lost a son in Iraq; a Tennessee woman with a terminal illness made worse after the state threw her off its health care plan for the poor; and Iraqi veterans against the war (who came in camouflage uniforms); among others. I got to meet members of the Frente Francisco de Miranda, young people incorporated into the revolutionary process in Venezuela where the poor have created Bolivarian Circles to study, to organize, to mobilize; and where their president, Hugo Chavez, has endeared himself as a leading representative of their interests onto the world stage.

Along the way, we ended up on national TV, radio, and some print publications. We also got a chance to sit front row for Hugo Chavez’s presentation to around 100,000 people in one of their main stadiums that lasted two-and-half hours (more or less). You’d think an adult ADD poster child like me would go nuts there, but I actually paid attention, recording most of the talk, and learning much about how words and ideas can swim easily with quotes (from Jesus to Marx), anecdotes, slogans, and even a song, which Chavez used to keep his talk engaging and moving.

Of course, any leader has flaws and Chavez is no exception. But very few in the Americas have challenged the mighty Empire of the US the way Chavez has. And since his election, many more progressive and socialist leaders have been elected to countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and most recently Chile and Bolivia. Something amazing is happening where the poor, the indigenous, the class conscious, and the creative now have a central place in the debates, in the streets, and in the policy-making chambers about where the country must go.

PPEHRC has been working for years to break the isolation of the US poor from the rest of the world (and the isolation of the world’s poor from the US), and to begin the process of unifying strategies and goals to help end poverty once and for all. The difference between this group and others professing to do the same involves placing that change in the hands of the poor themselves. I left Venezuela with a renewed sense of what is possible in Los Angeles. I also spoke much about the Xicano people and our long-history against combating class power, racism, injustice, and war.

The Venezuelans seems genuinely interested in Xicanos and the cultural and social bridge we consist of from the US to the rest of the Americas. I saw great possibilities that I’ve only seen a few times in the more than 30 years I’ve been involved in these battles. I know there is also grave danger looming over the new Venezuela, as it is for any country trying to break the bonds of neo-liberalism and globalized capitalism. But the dangers must never stop the advances of our causes, our dreams, our deep aspirations.

To end poverty in this century is a lofty goal, almost impossible, but as much wiser heads have often said, the “impossible” battles are the battles truly worth fighting. I left Venezuela feeling the need to spread this process everywhere I go, but most certainly in the belly of the beast. If we change this country so that the interests of the poor, the hungry, the children, the forgotten and abandoned are foremost and center, we can save the whole planet. The heart of the matter is that the interests of the poor are not just for material needs and health care and food and decent housing of the poor (although this is extremely vital), but for a balanced, spiritually-centered, and abundant earth for all.

All must benefit, poor and rich, all must learn, be empowered, and develop in wholesome and healthy ways, not just for this generation but for many future generations. I see the seed of this in Venezuela, if not crushed by the military and media might of the United States and those who support it in South America. We must do all we can to safeguard the revolution in Venezuela, and in so doing, to safeguard the revolutionary process already breaking out in this country.