2500 farmworkers are trained at the Peasant University Argimiro Gabaldón

By Magdalena Valdez-YVKE Mundial

Translated by Revolution Alimentaria.

One of the founding members of the Peasant University of Venezuela Argimiro Gabaldón, Atenea Jiménez, shared this past Monday that about 2500 workers receive training in the school.

“The Peasant Univerisy” was born as an iniciative of the Popular Power for the emancipation of the peasant men and women, but also of the urban areas because we now have more peasants in the urban areas than in the countryside. The purpose of the university is to reconstruct the peasant culture.”

Jimenez, during the interview with the TV Program El Desayuno on Venezuelan Television (VTV), stated that only 5% of the rural population in Venezuela works in the fields, therefore “it is physically impossible that this percentage can feed the remaining 95% of the population; this is the reason why the university was created, which is based on the comuna. It is a university that is deeply rooted in the territory, which purpose is to build socialism.”

This alma mater has peasant teachers and professionals experts in agriculture. In its spaces, the scientific and academic knowledge is combined with the ancestral wisdom to create a new way of learning. The educational institution created last year has 200 classrooms in 14 states across the country.

“It’s a university that not only retakes the *robinsonian concept of learning by doing -education and work – but it is not for generating employees for the multinationals but to promote the self-management of their own properties and land”, stated Jimenez and at the same time emphasized that the classrooms are the lands and plots of the peasants.

In mid-May, the Plan Nacional de Formacion Patria Campesina (National Plan for Peasant Development) of the University Argimiro Gabaldón delivered 1965 certificates to peasant workers in the country as part of the project of emancipating peasant teachers and the graduate program of public land management endorsed by the National Land Institute (INTI) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

*Simón Rodríguez, known during his exile from Spanish America as Samuel Robinson, was a Venezuelan philosopher and educator, notably Simón Bolívar’s tutor and mentor.

Spanish Version: 2500 trabajadores del campo se forman en Universidad Campesina Argimiro Gabaldón