His interest in praising the revolution is clear at this point and to some extent one could argue that he tries to avoid his personal story and switches to collective stories, instead. I can also interpret this as an attempt to summarize the whole story and conclude with "there are more opportunities for all during the current government's administration". That gratitude that he expresses towards the government allows him to present his current life as a result of chance because without the revolution he would not be where he is now. It is a fact that he profited from the creation of Mission Sucre and one could have expected such a self-presentation, especially in such a polarized context like the Venezuelan one. He ends his self-presentation arguing that most people at Mission Sucre are over 30, which could be a way to show me that most of the students were also excluded before and he feels satisfied about his own life because he was a normal example of a person who had been abandoned by previous governments.

#### *<IP_ADDRESS> Reconstruction of Luis's life history*

#### **Family background and childhood**

Luis was born in Calabozo167, Guárico state in 1981. He spent the first years of his life in a small city surrounded by rural areas and in contact with nature. The 1980s in Venezuela was a difficult decade in economic terms. In this period, many authors acknowledge the strong influence of the external debt causing the loss of buying power and the transition to poverty of large proportions of the population (Contreras, 1989). The so-called Black Friday took place in 1983 and after that day the Bolivar, which is the Venezuelan currency, suffered a strong devaluation. This had severe repercussions for the Venezuelan society, making the 1980s the beginning of a long process of political and social instability (Lacabana, 1990; Maza Zavala, 1987). The fact that Luis was born in this period is relevant because of his probable early contact with social challenges and to some extent to the daily socialization in an environment where there were probably financial concerns.

The main economic activity in Guárico state is agriculture with the cultivation of cereals such as rice, maize and sorghum. Cattle and swine are also some of the products that are produced there (Páez, 2001). This region is also rich in natural resources and actually one of the biggest gas reserves in the country and a major oil-producing area can be found there. Despite these facts, 55% of the population of this state lived in poverty by 2001 and there is a tendency towards rural communities. Luis was socialized in a constituted household consisting of both parents. Even though their religion is not clear, one could surmise that his family identifies itself as Catholic168. The names of the parents and further details such as

167 Calabozo is the former capital of Guárico state and is a small city approximately 281 km away from Caracas, the capital of the country. Guárico state is located in the center of Venezuela in the area known as "Los Llanos" (Spanish for The Plains) and it has specific geographical features, due to its combination of valleys and extended flat regions that go through an extended area of Venezuela and Colombia.

168 Venezuela is a predominantly catholic society (Pew Research Center, 2014).

age or race were not mentioned in the interview, which makes it difficult for me to develop his family background beyond a few isolated facts. Luis is Moreno169 , which is the result of the mixture between European, indigenous and Black people in America during colonial times. It is relevant to mention that the fact that he has brown skin in the geographical context where he was born did not make him a minority. It is hard to know whether his parents have the same phenotype. This lack of information could be attributed to my research project because in the interview he focused on his life as a student and worker rather than other personal aspects, even after the fact that I asked about his life as a whole. One can also assume that this was a weakness of my interview style because I did not insist on this matter during the external further questioning phase170. On the other hand, it could also shed light on the individual nature of my interview partner who tried to highlight his position as a case of educational success of a person coming from adversity. In this framework, the family is just a platform from which he emerged to what he is today.

The socioeconomic status of his grandparents is also unknown but one thing is certain, he comes from an academic household. Even though his household consisted of both parents at least until his late adolescence, his link to his mother was clearly stronger. Although, Luis refers to both parents when it comes to the issues of financial support, when it comes to the mother, he recognizes a supplementary kind of support that transcends financial or legal domains. In the literature about family and communities in Venezuela, some authors have identified an interesting picture of the so-called "popular Venezuelan family" (Moreno, 2007), that could provide some plausible explanations for this matter. The adjective popular in Spanish means proximity to regular people, something typical for low-income social classes according to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). Contreras et al. (2008) highlight the combination of different factors such as poverty, male chauvinism, violence, infidelity, feminism, and matricentrism in the shaping of a peculiar household where the image of the woman becomes highly relevant especially for the male son. This topic has attracted much attention from researchers from different backgrounds because the popular family in Venezuela does not follow the structural patterns of most western societies (Campo-Redondo et al., 2007).

As we can see through Luis, his mother had a strong presence in his life, not because of the absence of the father but due to her strong influence, support and proximity. His mother studied in Spain and became a veterinarian before returning to Venezuela where she decided to work in education. The fact that she managed to study abroad raises questions about the socioeconomic status of the grandparents. Luis's parents were married at the time of his birth and they were

169 Term used in Venezuela to refer to brown skin people. In other Latin American countries this term could be understood differently.

170 See chapter 4 for a discussion about interview challenges that I experienced.

working in Calabozo as school teachers. One could imagine that the professional environment of his progenitors brought Luis close to the world of culture, science and education. However, this is not necessarily consistent financially in Venezuela, because even though both parents had a profession as mathematics and biology teachers, the family experienced financial challenges. Several studies highlight the fact that the teaching profession in Venezuela is linked to lower salaries in comparison to other occupations (Liang, 2003; Bruni Celli et al., 2001).

He started his schooling journey at an expected age since preescolar, which is a preschool level for children before they are old enough to start primary school. In the context of many Venezuelan families this means that both parents work and the child spends most of its time at some kind of Kindergarten. Depending on the family dynamics, some families in Venezuela rely on the grandparents for the daily care of children but given that this was not mentioned in the interview, we could assume that his grandparents did not participate in his upbringing, at least directly. Some families also solve this issue because they can afford private child care services, offered by either individuals or institutions. It is not clear whether such an arrangement was even possible in Calabozo at the time of Luis childhood.

#### **Schooling at a bigger city, sports**

Primary school starts when the child is six years old and it lasts for five years. Luis's family moved from Calabozo to the capital of Guárico state (San Juan de los Morros) approximately in 1989 because his parents found a job there. Even though this job transition was briefly mentioned, one can assume that given the decade during which this took place, the change must have been favorable in terms of income because of the geographical setting. His brother was born around the same time, which means that his family had more expenses in a period characterized by austerity. His brother's age is unknown but one can extrapolate from the interview transcript that there is a gap of 6 to 8 years between them.

Moving to a bigger city is a milestone for a child, but apart from the fact that he had to give up his previous life and social relationships it can be reasonable to think that he was confronted with a bigger city and all the implications that this has. Nevertheless, he kept attending school as expected and went to two different schools. It is not clear why he changed schools, but it is certain that by the time he had to go to high school, his parents could afford a private school. This could imply that their financial situation improved in this new place or indicate a concern to provide a better life for their son. In Venezuela, as in many Latin American countries there are considerable gaps between the public and private educational system (CEPAL, 2010) in terms of quality and the fragmentation of levels and attending population (Peters, 2012). This has important repercussions for the issues of access to education and the future perspectives of students and graduates. Whereas in some countries students are distributed across a differentiated educational trajectory at a young age, in Venezuela this filter can be observed upon high school graduation, where not everybody continues to university. Many parents invest a great deal of money to send their children to private schools (or remedial education), in order to improve the chance that their children are admitted to public higher education institutions.

It is difficult to describe the conditions of educational institutions in San Juan de los Morros back then. Luis's reconstruction shows that he went through different schools, which could have different interpretations. He was able to recognize the differences between being at a public and a private school, while studying at a private high school:

"I graduated from a private school and as we all know private schools are for those people who can afford it and life is different than at a public school"171

Without assuming a difference in educational quality when it comes to infrastructure and the level of the teachers, it is clear that Luis noticed a difference when it comes to his classmate's behavior, manners, discipline, clothing and even their relationship to authority figures. It might have been already a radical change at his young age and it could have been positive for him to be in this new environment with more rules and structure. At the same time, Luis had to cope with being different and not having what his peers did. His first experiences with discrimination and otherness stem from the fact that he could not wear the same brands that his classmate would (e.g., shoes, jerseys and pullovers).

Luis was not only a student during his youth, he was also interested in sports. During his experience in high school, he was a member of different teams and played not only for entertainment, but because he also had the opportunity to compete in important events in his region. He belonged to a rescue group and tried out different sports such as skating, climbing and rappelling. Another milestone that one can mention is the end of high school, which confronted Luis with the existential crisis of figuring out what to do with his life. He finished high school when he was 17 years old, a normal age in general for the Venezuelan system.

#### **Romantic Involvement and the search for vocation**

One important issue about his childhood is the fact that he did not have to work. Some children from low-income households experience financial concerns beginning early in their lives and must help the parents in different ways to assure survival. In Luis's case he had a regular transition through school life, had the chance to dedicate his time to studying and practicing sports. He also developed strong bonds with friends and acquaintances from the city.

171 "Vengo de un liceo privado y como bien sabemos los liceos privados son para esas personas que pueden pagar los liceos privados y la vida es muy distinta a la de un liceo publico" (Luis, page 4 line 11).

By the time he was 17 years old, he had developed a set of social and cultural skills due to his parent's support and was about to finish high school when he met Carla172:

*"I was 17 years old when I was about to finish high school and my current wife was 14 at the time I met her through a common friend from a different school I met her and I said well a nice girl to have fun with we were those kind of sweaty hands couple a kissing couple and look how life changes she was about to be 15 years old in 1998 and we have been together since then we have been together for 14 years in good and bad times she has been a fundamental pillar for me academically my best role model"173*

He started a relationship with that woman with whom he would spend the next years of his life. This relationship presents an interesting transition in his life from the son to the boyfriend and afterwards husband, but his relation with Carla shows some similarities to the one he had with his mother. Besides, the triangle produced because of the interactions to both family configurations is highly relevant in his biography. In his life, both women present themselves not only as support and love providers but also as authority figures who not only encouraged him but who also challenged him and offered him guidance and motivation.

The structure of the Venezuelan school system follows a straightforward logic to prepare students to either develop an occupation or to continue to higher education. At some schools, young students learn a set of transferable skills for the labor market so they can enter the workforce upon completion. Regular high schools that do not prepare students for the labor market, such as the one Luis went to, are divided into high schools with humanities major or a major on science. This division allows students to deepen their knowledge in specific subjects that will eventually lead to a successful transition into a career. It is not clear from Luis's interview which one he took but given his choices after high school the most likely is a science, as will be seen later, because it is a necessary requirement to ambition careers in the fields of natural and health sciences.

Once he finished high school, he decided to study at the university. That happened at the end of the 90s and as he was trying to enter the university, a very important debate was occurring in Venezuela (and the world) that would have a dramatic impact for those students like Luis who were struggling to figure out what to do with their lives. Since 1973, a National Admission Process had been created to administrate the available places to study throughout the country. By the time Luis finished high school the normal procedure was to register for the

172 Pseudonym.

173 "Yo tenia 17 años cuando me estaba graduando de bachiller y mi esposa tenía 14 años la que es mi esposa hoy en día la conocí por una amiga en común de distintos liceos la conocí y bueno yo dije bueno una niña de repente un vacilon esos noviecitos de manos sudadas noviecitos de besos y las vueltas que da la vida ella estaba por cumplir 15 años desde el 98 hasta el sol de hoy estamos juntos tenemos 14 años juntos en las buenas en las malas altas bajas ella ha sido un pilar fundamental para mi a nivel de los estudios mi mejor ejemplo" (Luis, pag 18 line 19).

structured and centralized study places allocation process, carried out by the Office for Higher Education Planning (OPSU in Spanish). After being registered in this system, an aptitude test was necessary to measure verbal and numerical reasoning. Along with the test a personal, vocational and socioeconomic application form had to be submitted. The students were supposed to choose three study programs and/or universities where they were seeking admission. At the end of the procedure, a so-called academic index was calculated for each candidate, taking into account criteria such as average grades of high school, aptitude test scores, geographical location of the candidate, vocational aspirations, year of graduation and socioeconomic conditions (Morles et al., 2003).

Luis applied to study dentistry at one public university in Guárico and did not manage to pass the formal requirements to be granted access to the Universidad Nacional Experimental de los Llanos Centrales Rómulo Gallegos. This public university was founded in San Juan de los Morros in 1977 and in 1992 the study program of dentistry was approved (UNERG, 2014). Luis's experience as an aspiring dentist can be understood as the experience of someone who chose a study program with a high demand for positions, for which there were only a few places and universities available. As an example, one can point out that the brochure called "Study Opportunities" published by the Ministry of Higher Education shows that only 5 public universities and 3 private universities offer the dentistry program nationwide (MPPEU, 2014).

Apart from the issue of limited positions, there is some anecdotal evidence that suggests that dentistry and medicine students usually come from higher classes, or in other words from strong academic backgrounds. Even if Luis came from an academic household, one could establish the hypothesis that he did not have the best grades, given his participation in sports, which was an extracurricular activity that demanded time and effort from him. This does not mean that he was a bad student but it could mean that due to his interests he did not dedicate his full attention to his grades. Another hypothesis would be that his parents could not afford tutoring or even preparation courses for higher education admission tests174. I have not found any scientific literature on this matter in Venezuela but in other contexts such as New Zealand (Crampton et al., 2012), UK (Mathers et al., 2011), Chile (Valdés et al., 2009), Australia (Gietzelt, 1997) and Canada (Dhalla, et al. 2002) one can find a similar situation. It seems that in many places in the world, medicine and dentistry are selective study programs where there is a clear trend to select a few students from the academic elites. In Venezuela and for

174 Members of Middle and high classes not only possess cultural capital (see chapter 3) but they can also transform economic capital into extra cultural capital, for example, by paying for private courses to compensate for any lack of education or to improve their child's learning process at school. This includes the private offer of preparatory courses for admission tests at public universities.

Luis it would mean that he was going to belong to the hundreds or thousands of high school graduates called the "floating population".

#### **The search for alternatives**

In Venezuela the term "población flotante" has been used to describe this group of young people who leave high school and cannot be absorbed175 by any higher education institution. In my reconstruction, I have tried to trace back the origin of this term but it has not been possible to determine when it was used for the first time or its intended meaning. Panaia (2009) discusses this term from a different sociological perspective and defines it as a group of people who constantly shift from one place to another looking for survival. This means that the term has a meaning of uncertainty, of being lost, of not belonging anywhere at least in the sense of population studies and urbanization.

In higher education, though, it has individual and social implications. García Guadilla et al. (2006) explain that this population, often, tries to enter the system year after year by taking the admission tests again, some of them go into the private sector and there is a third group that just gives up and leaves the system. Interestingly, for some of these individuals going to the private sector is not possible due to financial burdens, which means that they would eventually leave the system, anyway. In my research, I have become interested in finding out, exactly, what happens with the third group of people who leave the system because there is a gap in the literature on higher education access. As we will see in Luis's life choices, he explored most of the options developed by García Guadilla et al. (2006).

The debate at the end of the 1990s dealt with the issue of lack of access for large population groups to public higher education and many authors attributed this reality to the lack of planning, the incapacity of the state in higher education, and the limitations of the high school system because it was not preparing students to pursue a higher education degree. I have found different interpretations of this phenomenon. For example during my field phase, Leonardo Carvajal176 told me that he did not see the problem that was being discussed because the higher education system had already a high coverage rate, according to the country's needs177. This means that offering more study opportunities could end up being a wasted effort because those graduates would not find a job in any case.

Nevertheless, as in Luis's experience, many members of this so-called "floating population" would keep looking for other ways to enter the university and he managed to enter the university with the help of his mother, who again played a determining role in his life. He, somehow, managed to overcome the barriers to

175 See the case of Yenni, where I explain this term.

176 See Appendix.

177 For a more precise elaboration of his perspective on the matter see Carvajal (2011).

enter the university through his mother's networks, but external factors associated to economic capital discouraged him to continue as he explains:

*"My mom talked to some people and we managed what I had hoped for to study dentistry because I really liked that study program I really like it and my first week there I was supposed to buy back then 2 million bolivars in new material and I could find used materials in 1 million when I saw the sacrifice that my mom was doing to get 1 million bolivars to buy the used material and my classmates told me I mean how are you going to study this study program and you are trying to find used stuff? in this subject you have to spend money and you cannot thanks to them I did a lot of thinking and I said to myself if I do not have the chance to study this is not because I do not want to but because it is not possible"*178

One interesting issue is presented at this point, as Luis experienced how the traffic of influences worked in Venezuela at the higher education level. The access to public universities, though, selective and complicated can, allegedly, be obtained through informal ways as was the case with him. The literature on corruption in Venezuela, as well as other Latin American countries covers different domains and areas where one could find irregularities. In the case of literature on the higher education system, there are a few newspaper articles where this issue is addressed (León, 2014; Figueroa, 2012) but it is hard to find reliable sources179. This matter is relevant to the issue of social inequality in Venezuelan academia because if this is actually the case it could be argued that people's access is not only restricted to those with better grades but also to those with social and (more) economic capital.

As a member of a family with financial challenges, Luis was forced to give up on his ambition to become a dentist but the criteria to decide whether he studied or not had nothing to do with his capabilities or vocation but because he could not afford what one needs to buy during the study process. Many debates about the issue of inclusion to education point out that granting access to students is just one part of the phenomenon. The costs both in financial terms and time make it difficult to students from disadvantaged environments because they would have to work during the study process. One solution for this kind of issue is the allocation of funds such as scholarships, but again if the criterion to grant them is only

178 "mi mamá movió los contactos logramos la esperanza de que iba a estudiar odontología porque a mí esa carrera me gustaba mucho me gusta mucho y la primera semana me estaban pidiendo para aquel tiempo 2 millones de bolívares en materiales nuevos y usados me los vendían en 1 millón cuando yo ví el sacrificio que mi mamá estaba haciendo para conseguir 1000 bolívares para conseguirme los materiales usados y los compañeros me dicen osea ¿como tú vas a estudiar una carrera y estás buscando comprar materiales usados?. En esta materia hay que gastar plata y tú no tienes esa plata gracias a ellos yo me puse a pensar y dije oye de verdad que si yo no tengo chance de estudiar esto no porque no quiera no porque no se pueda" (Luis, page 8 line 22).

179 Something interesting is that many of my interview partners mentioned at some point the issue of corruption and university places for sale. It is difficult for me to say whether this is an urban myth that has been reproduced in collective discourses or whether they have actually witnessed this.

academically measured the system can end up perpetuating the gaps among groups. One paradox that had been pointed out in many debates is the fact that the participation of members from the lower classes in Venezuelan academia was very insignificant and that precisely those who could not afford private education were those who were forced to turn to the private system. This academic segregation at the university level reproduces the inequalities of the society as a whole and creates an occupational segregation.

### **Family dissolution and new paths**

As this was happening, his family was experiencing a parental separation and his mother was about to be left alone with the household expenses, which made it even more difficult for him to go back to the idea of asking his parents for financial aid. It is not clear from the interview whether they got divorced or whether they got back together at a later stage of their life. After having tried to enter the university twice and having given up on the dream of studying dentistry, Luis decided to find other options outside of his household. Other members of his family came to play a very important role when he decided to leave his city. This time he went to a bigger city, Maracay, to pursue higher education there and he had the support of family members who lived there. The status of these members and to what extent they got involved remains unclear. However, we do know that his mother's sister lived in Maracay180 at the time. Back in Maracay, his cousin helped Luis to get into physical education and sports at the Pedagogical Institute in the same city. Maracay, compared to San Juan de los Morros is three times bigger in population and in the number of higher education institutions, which means that it offered a broader range of opportunities for someone like Luis who could not achieve his goal in his city.

 He elaborates on that period

*"I decided to stop asking my mother for money and left to Maracay I have family in Maracay and I told my mother that I wanted to spend Christmas at my aunt's house at her sister's house and I left to Maracay I asked my cousin who knew Maracay to take me to the Pedagogical Institute I looked for all the requirements and went back once I had everything in my bag I went back to Maracay and I asked my cousin to accompany me to apply without telling anything to my mom or my aunt I took my admission test and when the list of accepted applicants was published in the newspaper was when I told my mother that I had been admitted to study education physical education I was admitted and started studying it was hard because I I mean in my family we have all been very*

180 Maracay is located approximately 1 hour away from San Juan de los Morros but in terms of development there are some considerable differences. Aragua state is closer to the main ports and airports of the country and closer to the capital city Caracas, which makes it more dynamic and more urban than what Luis was used to.

*close to our mothers and fathers we were not like today's teenagers who go around the street at 14 or 15 years old by the time I reached the Pedagogical Institute it was a different world to me"*181

Even though Luis had already lived in different cities and experienced different schools, this change of environment and especially taking important decisions on his own was another important milestone in his life. In many Latin American countries is not normal to leave the parent's house until you are older. In countries such as Argentina and Mexico some authors have argued that the cost of living is one of the reasons to stay with the family, however, cultural reasons may also play a role, such as the harmonic family environment and strong ties with the parents (Corsaro, 2001). In other countries or cultures this phenomenon has more negative connotations such as the term "Parasite single" used in Japan or the European "Hotel Mama" for Italian and Spanish households.

From the excerpt, one can see that he was raised in a traditional family, and the separation process must have been hard for the family dynamic. Nowadays, higher education is influenced by concepts such as globalization and internationalization and students are encouraged to spend time abroad away from their families. In the context of a low-income family from a small city in Venezuela this mobility was neither desired nor positively perceived back then. Through this forced student's mobility, people leave their regions and sometimes do not return, given the low expectations of finding a job, which also creates a development gap among areas.

#### **Education as an alternative study program**

Luis entered the Pedagogical Institute located in Maracay, the capital of Aragua state. This institute was one of the regional facilities of a bigger institution called "Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador (UPEL)", which was founded in 1983 (UPEL, 2014) and covered different areas of the country (e.g., Caracas, Barquisimeto, Maturín, Maracay, Miranda among other smaller places). According to the website of this institute, there are 14 study programs (Biology, Special Education with a major in Learning Disabilities, Integral Education, Physical

181 "yo decidí pararme pidiéndole plata a mi madre y me fui a Maracay yo tengo familia en Maracay y le dije a mi mamá que yo quería pasar navidad en casa de mi tía en casa de su hermana y fui a Maracay le pedí a mi primo que conocía maracay que me llevara al Pedagógico busqué todos los requisitos me regresé cuando tuve todos los requisitos en mi bolso volví a viajar a maracay y le pedí a mi primo sin que le contara nada a mi mama y a mi tía que me llevara para yo hacer la preinscripción y eso fue un trayecto que yo hice todo sin decir nada para no crear expectativas ni nada por el estilo presenté mis pruebas hice todo eso y cuando salió el listado en el periodico fue cuando yo le dije a mi mamá que ya había quedado en una universidad donde se da educación en educación física quedé y fue fuerte porque de paso que yo osea en mi familia casi todos hemos sido muy mameros y paperos no somos no eramos esas personas que a los 15 14 años andaban por la calle como andan hoy en día la gente jóvenes cuando yo llegué al Pedagógico de Maracay fue otro mundo" (Luis, page 4 line 18).

Education, Music Education, Early Childhood, Special Education in Mental Retardation, Geography and History, computer technology, English, Language and Literature, Mathematics and Chemistry). It is not clear why he decided to study sports education from all the study programs available but one hypothesis would be his background and interest in sports. Sports education is one of the mandatory subjects that one has to take at school in Venezuela.

The professional development of the field has taken some time according to Ramírez Torrealba (2013) and Ramos de Balazs et al. (2014) who trace its origin back to the late 1950s and the 1960s, when the creation of higher education institutions for teachers started. Nevertheless, Ramírez Torrealba (2013) highlights the lack of research in this area and therefore he therefore perceives a low degree of historical importance in this discipline. Some studies about teacher's education in Venezuela have shown the attractiveness of these study programs for some socioeconomic groups, due to the wage security, as well as retirement and social welfare rights of those who work for the educational system (Peñalver, 2005). In Luis's case he had a background as the son of teachers, which might have had certain influence on his career choice. Though, some authors have elaborated on the socioeconomic profile of education students at Pedagogical Institutes and there is a trend towards members of middle to low classes (Cortázar, 1993 and Tineo, 2009).

Bruni et al. (2001) refer to the issue of social mobility as one of the reasons why high school graduates would choose to study education instead of other study programs. Many students of education can access the labor market at an early stage of their study programs, which is of great financial significance for member of lower classes. One must also take into account the selection procedures at Pedagogical Institutes, which can demand less from applicants in comparison to other public higher education institutions. In the case of some universities there are even some admission schemes that favor those who have background as athletes or musicians or for relatives of professors or non-academic staff of the institutions.

The document called "Special Rules of Admission" of the Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador (UPEL) contemplates the recognition of special aptitudes as an extraordinary admission mechanism for athletes, musicians and some other cases. Luis describes his experience as follows:

*"When I went to the Pedagogical Institute and applied I submitted my documents that show that I was an athlete it was so easy I took the tests anyway but I believe that I did not enter the Pedagogical Institute because of the tests but because I was a quality athlete because once I was there I was representing the Institute in basketball and beach volleyball and indoor volleyball since the moment I started until I graduated so I believe that being an athlete is important when it comes to being admitted at any university the athlete has that benefit and those who have money also but if you are neither an athlete*  *nor a person who has money you have to pray to God when you are going to take the admission test that is how I see it and what you see"*182

Luis's perception is accurate to some extent, because there is some evidence of the importance of university sports not only in Venezuela but in many countries of the world. Sosa and Sánchez (2012) discuss how the development of university sports is a strong priority for Venezuelan universities, not only to assure the development of the students, but also due to its importance as a competitive pattern against other institutions. Navarro (2008) identifies different sport policies at higher education institutions in Venezuela and indeed there are different schemes to recruit athletes, to get them involved in competitions and to offer accelerated admission and scholarships to individuals who can show outstanding abilities.

The literature on student athletes is very broad and offers a variety of positions on the matter. In my research about the experience of students who enter university through sports, I have found authors who highlight the benefits and positive academic outcomes and those who argue the opposite. There is no doubt that despite what one could debate about the issue, for Luis being a sportsman represented a very important condition in his life. During his studies he played volleyball, basketball and beach volleyball for the institute's team, which could be seen as a source of social capital, leadership and popularity. That means that apart from his study process at the Pedagogical Institute he also engaged in social activities and in team work. He spent some important moments in the Pedagogical Institute and during his study process to become a physical education teacher he already started working at a school in Cagua, a smaller town close to Maracay where he spent one full academic year.

#### **Becoming a father**

His relationship with Carla continued, likely as a long-distance relationship. However during his studies at the pedagogical institute he had an affair with another woman and they had a child. When he introduced the topic in the interview he said:

*"I have an eight year old child he is really not with my partner because my partner I mean my partner is a journalist she and I have been together for 14 years but of course*

182 "cuando yo fui al Pedagógico y me presenté presenté todos mis avales como deportista se me hizo muy fácil igual yo presenté todas mis pruebas pero yo creo que yo no entré al Pedagógico no tanto por todas las pruebas que presenté sino por ser un deportista de calidad porque inmediatamente que yo entré estaba representando al Pedagógico en baloncesto y en voleiball de playa y voleiball bajo techo desde que entré hasta que me gradué entonces yo creo que si tiene si tiene el ser deportista a la hora de entrar a cualquier universidad tiene un peso el deportista tiene esa facilidad y el que tiene la plata tiene esa facilidad pero el que no es deportista y no tiene la plata tiene que encomendarse a Dios cuando va a presentar la prueba es lo que yo pienso y es lo que se ve" (Luis, page 17 line 6).

*like every man I began to fool around at the university well I have an eight year old child very beautiful today very beautiful my wife loves him and adores him and my son loves my wife apart from her mother she is his other mom"*183

It is interesting how he talks about his child and mentions that his wife is a journalist as if it was the reason why they did not have a child together. The quote also gives us the impression that he tries to justify and trivialize his infidelity by telling me that everything worked out all right and that they all get along well, nowadays. He positions himself as a person who did what every man would have done and he does not admit his own responsibility for having made that decision. Otálora and Salas (2004) discuss the meaning of infidelity in the context of poverty and document the patterns of the popular Venezuelan family, where there is evidence that men have relationships with several women, sometimes at the same time, and they have stable relationships for short period of times. This could be understood as a manifestation of machismo184, which culturally gives men, in cultures such as the Venezuelan one, the need to show their power over women. This interpretation of masculinity justifies infidelity as a natural and socially accepted male behavior (Contreras et al., 2008).

Luis says to me that he had an affair in a way that seems that I would take for granted that all men would do that. Indeed, my desk research shows that many studies in Latin America confirm this belief in both men and women that men are instinctively unfaithful and that an affair has a different meaning, which has more to do with a need than an emotion (Otálora and Mora 2004; Varela 2014; Contreras et al., 2011). It would be plausible to assume that having a child early in his life had some implications for his life choices and probably brought along certain financial burdens. I tried to find research on young adults or even teenage fatherhood but it seems that the topic is normally focused from the female perspective. This could be for a variety of reasons, such as the fact that women are more affected by this phenomenon because they have to bear the consequences more than men do. Even if it is not clear what the consequences were for the mother of the child or to what extent Luis fulfilled his role as a father both psychologically and financially185, it is interesting to reflect on this life turn. Another important consideration is the triangle in his life between Carla and that other woman, which for a young person can be challenging.

183 "yo tengo un hijo de 8 años realmente no es con mi pareja porque mi pareja osea esa periodista ella y yo tenemos 14 años juntos pero claro como todo hombre me puse a mariquear en la universidad bueno tengo hoy en día un niño de 8 años muy bello muy hermoso mi esposa lo ama y lo adora y mi hijo ama a mi esposa aparte de su madre ella es su otra mamá" (Luis, pag 5 line 2).

184 Originally a Spanish word that is used in other languages to express "a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity" (Dictionary.com, 2015).

185 From the interview it is clear that the son lives with his mother in Maracay even though Luis visits him often.

Despite the fact that having a child during the study period could be a reason why some people abandon the system Luis continued to study. He managed to graduate as a teacher when he was 22 years old. When he thinks about the time at the Pedagogical Institute retrospectively, he talks about the people he met there and the impact on his life in a way that one has the impression that his becoming a father was totally unproblematic for his experience:

*"There you turn into a man you turn into a woman and I learned that there I say that what I am today is the result of what I learned at the Pedagogical Institute in Maracay and I have a lot of friends the majority of the professors are friends of mine and I still pay them a visit when I go to Maracay"*186

But beyond the sentimental value of the time spent at the Pedagogical Institute, there is a clear legacy for his cultural and intellectual capital:

*"I always take advantage of my time and stop by the Pedagogical Institute and I realize that the educational and human level that I became myself there when it comes to education because excellence and quality is amazing there and at the human level because I learned how to defend myself and I learned how to work how to be independent from my parents and that had led me to where I am today"*187

#### **Professional path discontinuity**

Once he graduated as a physical education teacher, he decided not to continue with that discipline, meaning that having obtained that degree did not translate into neither a financial source nor an achievement in his life. It is not easy to understand the turn that his life took once he finished his study program at the Pedagogical Institute, especially if one considers the value that the whole experience had for him. Nonetheless, the issue of vocational choice is a complex matter and I believe that this milestone deserves a little more deliberation. At first, I established certain hypotheses, which allowed me to provide a plausible explanation for the choice of not pursuing a career in education upon completion of the study program. Most of these assumptions were based either on the issue of realization that he wanted to do something else, that he could not find a job, that financial concerns were at stake and that he could not adapt well in Maracay and therefore had some problems with his options at the time.

186 "ahí te haces hombre te haces mujer eso lo aprendí yo allá yo digo que lo que yo soy hoy en día lo aprendí en el Pedagógico de Maracay y bueno tengo muchas amistades la mayoría de los profesores son mis amigos todavía los visito cuando voy a Maracay" (Luis, page 4 line 32).

187 "Siempre aprovecho y me escapo al Pedagógico y me pongo a ver que tanto a nivel educativo como humano yo me hice yo me formé ahí en la parte educativa porque la excelencia la calidad es una cuestión impresionante a nivel humano bueno porque aprendí a defenderme solo aprendí a trabajar a no ser tan dependiente de mis padres lo que hoy en día bueno me lleva a donde estoy" (Luis, page 5 line 7).

However, if one takes a closer look at his case, one could see a troubling development in someone's career choice, which could be called a casual or incidental choice. This means that he chose a study program just because it was accessible. One of the consequences of this is that the successful culmination of the regular study period did not translate into satisfaction for him. The questions about whether or not a person goes on to find a job, where he or she is not satisfied is another issue that can be discussed. However, Luis was not clear about his future at the time. The reasons why he wanted this at first are unknown. It could be that he wanted to help others, or that he was interested in the human mouth. It could also be possible that he was looking for the social recognition, reputation and lifestyle of an odonatologist. Regardless of the reasons why he wanted to study dentistry, he seemed to have chosen a radically different study program without having received any specific guidance. Many schools, universities and even public services throughout the world offer nowadays vocational counseling to prevent this kind of stressful process of trial and error, when finding the right study program. Luis had a variety of changes since his early childhood. It would be interesting to wonder whether the system could or should have intervened in this process of self-realization. As it will be seen, the result of this inability to decide or to find a specific career path had a high amount of consequences in financial terms for someone who needs to start working as soon as possible.

#### **From vocation to curiosity: Mass communication at a private university**

Once it became clear to Luis that the teaching profession was not something he was willing to do, he started working on a variety of things. He mentioned in the interview that he started working with political issues and at stores but this cannot be reconstructed. Certainly, what one can interpret out of his life choices is that he was looking for something else but at the same time there were financial concerns that he could not ignore. His girlfriend was studying Mass Communications at the Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua in Turmero, which is another small city near Maracay. Luis had a stable relationship with Carla and picked her up regularly at the university. During several visits to the main campus he got the chance to audit classes188 and discovered a strong inclination towards this study program. Interestingly, Mass Communication is one of the most popular study programs in Venezuela, as well as dentistry and the regular study time is 5 years or 10 semesters, which could mean that the status of the profession is actually something that attracted him to both majors.

Luis's relationship with the education system is striking because he experienced public and private schooling as a child, attended a public university

188 Oyente in Spanish. It means when a person attends classes at a higher education institution without being matriculated.

for a short time and graduated from a Pedagogical Institute. However, when it comes to his life satisfaction he regarded himself as an excluded person educationally speaking. In the database "Book of Higher Education Opportunities" one can find 25 higher education institutions, where the Mass Communication program is offered (11 public and 14 private). He could have looked for an option at any of those public universities in Venezuela. However, he probably assumed that he would have faced a similar problem to get into a public university, as was the case when he tried to study dentistry, because of the demand. This brings a couple of issues that I would like to discuss briefly. The first would be the issue of self-exclusion, where members from the lower classes were discouraged to even try to get into the public system. The second aspect that interests me is the issue of private education as a social absorption mechanism for those who cannot make it into the public sector. In his case, one cannot ignore the fact that he probably wanted to be close to Carla and therefore did not look for any other alternatives.

He left his parent's household looking for his own opportunities, and things were probably tougher than what he was expecting, which is why he had to return to his family for financial support. It is plausible to believe that Luis had mixed feelings because he had to go to his parents for financial help to study even though he had already graduated and had a child. "I looked for ways to convince my parents to pay my college education to help me pay that university until I could convince them"189

The word choice "to convince them" suggests that his parents probably reacted with skepticism. Nevertheless, they cooperated and Luis managed to enter a private university, where Carla was also studying. The privately run Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua was founded in 1986 (UBA, 2015). This young university had continued to expand since its foundation and nowadays it consists of five campuses. During his time at UBA he had the opportunity to observe the differences between the public and private higher education sectors190 once more, and to reinforce the social imaginary of a society where some people have more chances than others and where most times money is something that matters the most.

According to the website of the Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua, a social communicator is an active researcher capable of sending a coherent and effective message with a high degree of social sensibility thanks to the use of technology191 . The fields of specialization are journalism, marketing & public relations, and

189 "busqué las maneras de convencer a mis padres que me pagaran la universidad que me ayudaran a pagar esa universidad hasta que los pude convencer" (Luis, page 1 line 13)

190 For a broader description of the Venezuelan higher education sector see chapter 5.

191 Se describe al Comunicador Social egresado de la Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua como un investigador activo capaz de enviar un mensaje efectivo y coherente gracias a las tecnologías más mediáticas con un alto grado de sensibilización social (UBA, 2015).

communication & development. One could formulate the hypothesis that Luis found an attractive environment at UBA, given the entrepreneurial description of the occupational profile. Mass Communication is a well-respected profession in Venezuela, and several alumni of this study program have important positions on national TV, and for newspapers and radio. This offers some important insights into the demographics of this field, and the boom observed by some authors when it comes to student numbers in the recent past (Cuenca, 1998 and Aguirre, 1998).

#### **Dropping out of the university**

There is not a lot of available information about his experience during his time as a student of Mass Communication at the UBA except for the fact that he was a good student and he worked at a store to help his parents with the tuition fees. It is not clear where he lived during his studies or even whether or not he was living with Carla at the time, because she was finishing her program by the time he started. The role of Carla in his life became more important as the years went by and she was financially supported by Luis's parents, given her low-income background and her proximity to Luis's family. He explains:

"but the university she practically my wife was helped by her grandfather and my mom my mom because she saw in her a person worth investing in in the university because she was going to produce good results"192

This kind of strong bond between both family constellations is an expected behavior among low-income families and especially members of small communities, where everybody looks after one another. It would be reasonable to assume that Carla joined Luis's family in what could be called a modified extended family (Otálora and Mora, 2004; Contreras et al. 2008). These authors discuss a kind of family characterized by mutual collaboration among people who in most cases are not blood relatives. Even though everything was working out for Luis, he was faced with a difficult decision in the middle of his study program. He decided to sacrifice himself to support his girlfriend. In the following statement, he shows how he comes to terms and justifies his dropping out of Mass Communications:

*"she was studying she was about to graduate and I was beginning to study I was working in a shop but it was not enough to pay my tuition fees so my dad and my mom helped me but the day came when the university was too expensive and well I decided to leave school not to put more pressure on my mother and to enable her to help Carla after she finished*

192 "pero esa universidad ella prácticamente mi esposa se la ayudo a pagar su abuelo y mi mama mi mama porque vio en ella una persona que valía la pena gastar la plata en esa universidad porque iba a dar resultados" (Luis, page 6 line 33).

*her study program my mom asked me if I wanted to to continue there and I said no I mean it is a lot of money"*193

This could be considered a biographical crisis for Luis because he was again facing adversity. It is interesting to analyze in the framework of a patriarchal society the fact that a woman was promoted over a man. One interpretation of this would be that Carla's graduation was seen as a family investment. In many contexts a family must promote certain members to the disadvantage of others, considering that there are not enough resources for everybody. It has to be said that this experience in Luis's life is not something strange in an inflationary194 economy like Venezuela's. After 1986, inflation became an everyday reality in Venezuelan's life (Faría and Sabino, 1997; Anido Rivas, 1996). Inflation in the country had different permutations during the 1990s and by the time Luis was at UBA inflation was approximately 20% (Selman and Fornet, 2014)195. When it comes to private education, this has direct repercussions for family budgets, because they cannot anticipate the total investment that going to school or college will represent.

Going to the university entails a great deal of variables and for someone like Luis who could not enter the public sector, it is expected that the private sector can offer an alternative. Nevertheless, in his experience the financial burden was a determinant for his problems at this new institution. When he presents the facts, he seems to attribute his results solely to the financial dimension:

*"well I entered the university and reached the fifth semester because that is a private and well-known university in Venezuela and very expensive then my parents are teachers but the salary they had plus mine between the three of us we paid and eventually it was not possible anymore I reached the fifth semester with all my subjects passed"*196

The literature on drop-outs in Latin America refers to this phenomenon as "desertion", which has a negative connotation coming from the military, which means that a soldier left without accomplishing his expected duties. De Vries et al.

193 "ella estaba estudiando ella estaba por graduarse y yo estaba comenzando a estudiar yo trabajaba en una tienda pero no me daba para costearme solo la universidad entonces mi papa y mi mama me ayudaron pero llego un momento en el que la universidad se puso excesivamente cara y bueno yo decidi dejar los estudios para no presionar mas a mi madre y dar la posibilidad que ella ayudara a Carla luego que ella termino su carrera su vaina mi mama me dice que si queria continuar alla y le dije no osea es mucha plata" (Luis, page 7 line 12).

194 Inflation can be defined in simple terms as the substantial and sustained increase of prices (Anido Rivas, 1996). Normally, when this phenomenon is discussed macroeconomic variables and political strategies come into play.

195 According to Weisbrot and Johnston (2012) inflation has averaged about 22 percent annually since 2003, which has led some authors to affirm that Venezuela has one of the highest inflations in Latin America at the moment (Weisbrot and Ray, 2010).

196 "bueno yo entré y llegué hasta el quinto semestre en la Bicentenaria porque esa es una universidad que es privada y es reconocida en Venezuela y muy costosa entonces mis padres son educadores más el sueldo que ellos tenían juntábamos entre los 3 y pagábamos llegó el momento que no se pudo yo llegué hasta el 5to semestre con todas mis materias aprobadas" (Luis, page 1 line 15).

(2011) reconstruct the issue of dropping-out and compare the results from research in Latin America to Europe and North America. Whereas in the latter there seems to be a great deal of reasons to explain why people leave the university, in the former the socioeconomic condition of the student seems to play a bigger role. This would be consistent with Luis's experience, given that he dropped out from two institutions because the financial challenges overwhelmed him.

At the same time, he had managed to complete a study program at the Pedagogical Institute, even if he later decided that he did not wanted to follow that career path. What we can see in his case is what some authors have called "abandonment" (the person decides to leave to pursue personal objectives, to find a new program, to change the institution or to adapt to different life milestones) and cannot be seen as failure (Parrino, 2014). Seen from the perspective of the system as a whole, Luis kept changing institutions and different educational settings but he was still in the system. Even with this optimistic view on the matter, one could see that Luis was again facing the frustration of having to give up because of external circumstances. In this second attempt to study he had completed the first half of the curriculum by the time he decided to give up, which makes it more problematic for his educational curriculum because he was also now beyond the expected age to start a career and had other personal constraints.

#### **Going back to the beginning and the search for a job**

He decided to go back to San Juan de los Morros because his wife197 had started to work as a journalist at a local newspaper there. The newspaper where she started to work is, according to its website, the most important and popular in the whole state of Guárico. While she was starting to develop her career, Luis was still looking for his place in the world. Coming back to San Juán de los Morros was not as smooth as one would have hoped and he spent over a year without neither studying nor working. Apart from the financial difficulty of not having an income, one should consider the social stigma of a person who is not being productive, especially because he was married to a person who was working. This could be one reason to explain why Luis wanted to find a job. He explains:

*"Well I found a job at an Auto Electrical System Repair shop during that year because well as everybody else young people like to be on the couch the whole day at home but there are many young people who do not like that who want to invest their time in something good in my case let's say fifty fifty I was a little lazy but at the same time I worked through the year while I was trying to study and then well work"*198

197 The reconstruction of his biographical data does not allow me to specify when they got married. 198 "Bueno si conseguí trabajo en un electroauto durante ese año porque osea bueno como a todo

muchacho cualquiera le gusta estar echado en su casa y anda de vago cuando es joven pero hay

Since he had a degree in physical education, it is hard to reconstruct the possible reason for his decision to work at an Auto Electrical System Repair shop. My hypothesis was that he went back to San Juan de los Morros because he wanted to be reunited with his wife and his nuclear family but he was still not sure about what he wanted to do with this life. His mother and his wife are mentioned as strong sources of encouragement, patience and tolerance for him. Both women guided him and offered him advice and more importantly, they set an example for him because they were both professionals, who were active in the labor market. One positive aspect of this moment in his life was that he still had the support of the parents, and his wife could probably support their household financially, which probably gave him some time to decide what he really wanted to do.

### **Joining the system**

After some time, he eventually found a job at a Ministry in 2008. It is not clear how he found the job or what he was doing there. At this point, it was necessary to formulate some hypotheses. It is plausible to wonder if he found that job because of his social networks. Both his mother and his wife were working for the government at the time. He argues:

*"My mom is recognized in the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology for her professional career and here in Guárico she is one of the most recognized women here in San Juan de los Morros and statewide because she was the coordinator of science centers at state's level a person who reached the first five or six places in science in Guárico state my mom is known throughout the state"*199

According to the analysis of his biographical data he started working at the Ministry for Science and Technology in approximately 2008, which allows me to hypothesize that it could be possible that the Ministry was hiring young people without prior experience within the framework of expansion efforts. Another hypothesis consistent with the issue of ministerial expansion could be that he was politically involved at the time and that allowed him to find a position in the government. Since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, the structure of the Venezuelan government has increased dramatically. The new constitution, approved after the constitutional referendum in 1999, expanded the number of Branches of Government from three (legislative, judicial and executive) to seven

muchos muchachos también que no les gusta eso que les gusta invertir su tiempo en algo bueno en mi caso fue vamos a decirte mita y mita vageaba andaba de flojo pero a la vez trabajaba mientras me pasaba ese año pues para poder intentar estudiar y después bueno trabajar" (Luis, page 18 line 13).

199 "Mi mamá es reconocida en el Ministerio de Educación y en el Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología por su trayectoria laboral y aquí en Guárico es una de las mujeres más buscadas aquí en San Juan de los morros y en casi todo Guárico porque ella fue la coordinadora de los Centros de Ciencia a nivel estadal una persona que llegó en el estado Guárico a 5 o 6 primeros lugares en ciencia y tecnología a mi mama la conocen en todo el estado Guárico" (Luis, page 6 line 3)

(Municipal, State, Legislative, Executive, Judicial, Citizen and Electoral) (CRBV, 1999 Article 136).

When it comes to the number of Ministries, the Organic Law of Central Administration declared the existence of 14 Ministries by 1999 (LOAC, 1999 Article 39). By 2014 there were 32 Ministries in Venezuela, which means that Venezuela became the country with the highest amount of Ministries in the world (NTN24, 2014). Perazzi (2007) writes that the Venezuelan government employs approximately 20% of the population who are economically active and that this percentage can vary in different areas of the country where the private sector does not generate enough employment. But this reality has changed given the expansion of the participation of the government in different sectors through either nationalization of companies or the creation of several new public agencies.

The Venezuelan government has used this strategy as a way to cope with unemployment and exclusion by creating more jobs. This has been consistent with the creation of a variety of urgent employment and education programs, which create a potential workforce. As evidence to support the hypotheses related to the alleged involvement of his family with members of the government it would be important to discuss the detail that his wife started to work, soon after their return, for the Office of the Governor of the state as a communication specialist. Simultaneously, she also started to teach at one Aldea Universitaria of Mission Sucre200 in the area of projects201 .

#### **One more time: Mission Sucre as a new chance**

Mission Sucre was created in 2003 as an initiative to offer higher education for all in Venezuela. By the time Luis started his study program at UBA, Mission Sucre was already available, but he did not find out until Carla started working there. He had contact with this new educational setting by chance because he entered classes again every time he picked his wife up. This time Carla was not a student but a facilitator, which is the name used in Mission Sucre to refer to teaching staff. Suddenly, he saw another opportunity for him to go back to the university but it is possible that his decision to start at Mission Sucre was also motivated by his career prospects in the Ministry where he started working before this. His wife offered some advice and convinced him to try to get his credits recognized because he had already covered 5 semesters at UBA and it did not make any sense to start from the beginning.

Under normal circumstances many universities can choose the way they organize their study programs through a credit system, a specific workload, subjects or courses that the person has to take, etc. When a student wants to change institutions, it is usually normal to go through a process that can be called

200 For a detailed account of Mission Sucre see chapter 6.

201 For a deeper discussion about the academic profession in Venezuela in the framework of Mission Sucre see chapter 6.

transfer of credits202. These processes are different depending on whether the person wants to do the same study program, whether or not there are academic incompatibilities or whether the universities are not on the same country. This process sometimes applies for people with a degree from another country and there are some steps to get the academic credentials recognized in terms of a homologation of the degree.

The Aldeas Universitarias are physical spaces where higher education in the communities is provided. Nevertheless, there are several institutions that oversee their study programs and award the degrees. Luis had to go to the headquarters of the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela to discuss his case. Once in Caracas, he experienced the duality of the system, the bureaucracy and administrative costs:

*"Imitates wife: Let's give it a try there in Caracas to see what the chances are like let's go to the Bicentenaria to collect your papers and we go to Caracas himself: from there incredibly I had to pay to be given my papers something that was mine I had to pay at the Bicentenaria to receive my file I had to pay almost 1500 bolivars well ok it does not matter we paid I went to Caracas and I was asked to submit an equivalences request in order so I could study in San Juan de los Morros and to prove my grades that I had 5 approved semesters in mass communications the curriculum is the same and well I wanted to continue with my studies and legally that was my right the equivalences you know"*203

But beyond the complex process that he had to go through he found himself in the middle of the conflicts associated to the diversity and incompatibility of different schemes and approaches in the country. He shares his experience:

*"The person in charge at the Bolivariana I will never forget she told me that I would graduate faster if I started from scratch because it would be hard that the Bolivariana accepts my equivalences because I was from a squalid204 and private university"*205

I have not been able to validate this information because neither Mission Sucre nor the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela offer detailed information about

202 Revalidas or equivalencias in Spanish.

203 "Vamos a tocar esa puerta ahí en Caracas a ver que posibilidades hay vamos a la Bicentenaria a retirar tus papeles y nos vamos a caracas increíblemente yo tuve que pagar para que me dieran mi título algo que yo me gané yo tuve que pagar en la Bicentenaria para que me dieran mi expediente yo tuve que pagar casi 1500 bolívares bueno chévere no importa se pagaron me fui a Caracas y me piden una solicitud de equivalencias para que para yo estudiar en San Juan de los Morros y demostrar con mis notas que yo tenía 5 semestres aprobados en Comunicación Social el pensum es el mismo y bueno yo quería continuar mis estudios y legalmente tenía ese derecho pues de las equivalencias" (Luis, page 15 line 6).

204 This is a term (escuálido/a) used in Venezuela to refer to members of the opposition. Its textual translation would be "squalid", which means in English "foul and repulsive, as from lack of care or cleanliness; neglected and filthy".

205 "la persona que me atendió en la Bolivariana nunca se me va a olvidar la persona me dijo que primero me graduaba comenzando desde cero a que la Bolivariana me aceptara las equivalencias porque yo venía de una universidad escuálida y privada" (Luis, page 1 line 30).

equivalencies or recognition of prior academic experience. Nevertheless, I have looked for legal precedents in both the University Law and the Regulations for Revalidation and Equivalence of Studies and both documents suggest that what Luis was expecting should have been possible. Many other universities offer their policies on this regard explicitly and even online and in many cases the process seems complicated and probably long. However, the curriculum of Mission Sucre and the one of UBA should be comparable and at least, legally, both institutions should have the same status and share the same taxonomy of degrees and titles.

One must say that such an experience shows that beyond the formal complications that the higher education system might experience on daily basis there are people whose life is affected by internal conflicts. During my field phase I experienced the duality of the system during my conversations with members of both the traditional and the newly established institutions. One of the most interesting issues is the denial of what the others are doing because both groups have stigmatized one another. Several authors have already addressed this paradox of a system where there is a discourse about inclusion and participative democracy but where the interclass polarization is unique in Latin America (for more on this issue see García Guadilla, 2011, 2012; García-Guadilla, 2006, García-Guadilla and Mallen, 2013; Parra, 2015; Peters, 2015).

It is understandable that an experience like that was a source of disappointment but Luis acknowledges his wife's persuasive personality and the fact that he was motivated to study mass communication and that is how Luis managed to enter Mission Sucre when he was 27 years old.

#### **Mission Sucre and a new start**

For years, there have been discussions about the existence of new student groups that differ from the traditional higher education student in the framework of higher education expansion processes in the world. In the booklet Conceptual Grounds of Mission Sucre (MES, 2004b) the characteristics of the target population of Mission Sucre are discussed. There are, basically, five groups of students who attend Mission Sucre, and Luis would belong to the group D: People regardless of their age who entered higher education but never completed it (MES, 2004b).

The way Mission Sucre operates represents a complex institutional arrangement, given the heterogeneous student conditions and the student population that it serves. In Luis's case it is difficult to locate him in a specific category. By the time he started at Mission Sucre one could argue that he was in a position of advantage compared to many other participants of the Mission. Even if Luis considers himself as an excluded individual and is counted as one, it is important to remember that he was a person with a solid background after his successful participation at different schools, a pedagogical institute and a private university. Once he entered Mission Sucre he would be placed with people with other characteristics, who lagged behind in many cognitive and cultural ways. This is a debate that has taken place in many contexts in the world, about whether or not members of disadvantaged groups benefit in groups where they are challenged206. It is interesting that Mission Sucre seems to treat all students similarly, even though some have no educational background whatsoever, whereas others are coming back to the higher education system.

For Luis, this meant not only that he could not have his credits from UBA recognized, but that he had to start from the beginning all over again. This situation did not represent a source of frustration for him, though. In his interview, he even shows a certain degree of optimism because going through the five semesters again was a way to gain more confidence about his previous knowledge and the fact that the study process was not difficult in this period. This should be explained in the framework of his interest of presentation:

"I enrolled at Mission Sucre and did my introductory course and the next five semesters were very easy because I had already took them and the contents were familiar to me"207

Mission Sucre in its work as a compensatory program to offer higher education to excluded groups, offers a so-called University Initiation Program (PIU in Spanish) for its applicants in order to bridge the transition between their current status and their life as students. Over the course of my research on this, there seems to be some inconsistencies and constant changes throughout the years about whether or not this program takes place and how. Nevertheless, it has been described as an introductory period of 16 weeks, where students have the chance to go through different contents (such as basic mathematics, language and communication (Spanish) and Venezuela in the global context) that must be mastered before entering any of the study programs that Mission Sucre offers.

Perhaps, one of the reasons for his reaction is the gratitude he feels towards Mission Sucre because after all his previous experiences at other institutions, Mission Sucre seemed to open its doors. However, it must have been difficult for him to be brought back to such basic level with high-school-like subjects, he was already a graduate of a teaching program and had worked as a teacher. From my perspective, this initiation program would be lower to his zone of proximal development (Vygotski, 1997), which means below his cognitive level of development and one can expect a lack of interest and a feeling of boredom from him. Eszter Gábor (2015) documents the experiences of disabled individuals who were included in the higher education system after political reforms in Hungary after 1989. She found a certain feeling of discomfort among certain members

206 Such as the debate about integrating disabled pupils into mainstream schools or avoiding minority segregation.

207 "me inscribí hice mi trayecto inicial y los siguientes 5 semestres se me hizo muy fácil porque ya son 5 semestres que yo había estudiado tenía los conocimientos relativamente vivos" (Luis, Pag 1 line 34).

because they were grouped with individuals with a higher degree of disability. In other words, I can imagine that a similar situation could have been the case in Luis's experience, because he had to join a classroom with people with a lower cultural capital than he already had. He discusses the admission process in his Aldea Universitaria and argues:

*"Uhmmm when it comes to Mission Sucre what I said just go with a copy of your ID and you can be sure you will not be asked for much more but the desire to study that is the first difference between the two sides when I talk about the traditional university, the private university and now the mission in one you pay to get a study place in the other one you don't you have to pay as well for a study place if you don't take the tests and are lucky enough to be granted access and in the mission well in the mission the only thing you need is your desire to study"*208

I must say that this kind of description of how easy it is to enter Mission Sucre is a common statement in my interviews. However, over time it seems that this has changed and the application process includes an online registration process, which must be submitted for a specific study program and a specific Aldea with two copies of personal documentation (MPPEUCT, 2015; Gobiernobolivariano, 2015). Luis seems to describe the access either from his past experience or from his present perspective, where Mission Sucre in addition to being an academic institution, represents for him the materialization of a project in terms of accessibility. Whereas in other institutions academic merits or the likelihood to pass are expected, Mission Sucre offers an open institutional setting for those who have the desire to study, that is geographically accessible, financially feasible and with some different approaches for a population that does not respond to the traditional demands of academia.

Luis's beginning at Mission Sucre was full of experiences worth mentioning. One important first reflection was about the demographics. He observed a trend in age groups, which gave him the reassurance that a great proportion of people did not have the chance to study at the higher education level until they were over 30 years old. This is a contrast to what he probably experienced at the previous institutions he attended. But apart from the comparison among institutions this gave him another perspective about his own life.

Apart from the demographics, the socioeconomic background of his classmates was relevant for his student experience at the Aldea Universitaria. The whole educational process in Mission Sucre follows the logic of community work

208 "ehhh a nivel de la Misión Sucre lo que dije ve con tu copia de la cedula y tu puedes estar seguro que no te van a pedir más nada sino las ganas de estudiar esa es la primera diferencia entre las dos bandos cuando te hablo de la universidad pública tradicional, la universidad privada tradicional y ahora la misión en una pagas por tu cupo en la otra no también tienes que pagar por tu cupo si no presentas y corres con la suerte de haber entrado y en esta misión bueno la misión lo único que tiene es que es tus ganas de estudiar" (Luis, pag 13 line 22).

and highlights working class values and practices209. As result, Luis felt easily integrated in this environment but he also developed a strong social sensibility. One example of this kind of rearrangement of the regular practices to adapt to the socioeconomic conditions is the explicit commitment to accepting assignments and papers written by hand to avoid the financial burden of printing costs and to allow people without a computer access to a higher education.

But the fact that Luis had already attended higher education institutions also had repercussions on his expectations about what a university should be like. When he arrived, he started to challenge current practices that he observed and the self-confidence and even leadership that he showed opened many doors for him in the Aldea Universitaria. He started to develop a profile of student leader in a more political and activist role. In this case, though, his role was to express some demands on behalf of the students and himself to guarantee a better experience at the Aldea Universitaria. Here he experienced again the complexities of the higher education system, given the perceived stigma that Mission Sucre has from member of traditional elites and due to the demographics of the Mission:

*"sadly Mission Sucre and the Bolivarian are still regarded nationally as yellow lid everyone who graduates there is a yellow lid210 and I imagine that there must be someone who thinks like me at every Aldea to want to prove that we are not yellow lid but that we are good professionals then I took over the role and closed the gate and put chains without burning tires or anything because I come from the pedagogical institute where I was used to burning tires closing streets stealing cars burning cars burning motorcycles fighting with cops and the national guard and I tried to apply it here but decently because I cannot expect 50 60 year old people to throw stones"*211

In the previous quote, there are several interesting issues. First, Luis recognizes that being a part of Mission Sucre comes with an external label that he had never experienced before as a student. This means that his participation at the university has other connotations for him because he needs to prove that Mission Sucre is

209 See chapter 6.

210 In the 1990s there were some dishwasher detergent commercials where there was a comparison between the effects of the advertised product against a lower quality one. The lower quality one did not have any brand and it was identified only because it had a yellow lid. Since then, the term yellow lid and pirate mean in Venezuelan slang low quality, bad, poor. The commercial can be seen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvMC25wAPpY

211 "tristemente la mision sucre y la biolivariana siguen siendo consideradas a nivel nacional como tapa amarilla todo el que sale de alli es un tapa amarilla y nosotros me iamgino que en cada alde a anivel nacional debe haber alguien que piense igual que yo en querer demostrar que no somos tapa amarilla sino que somos buenos profesionales entonces yo tome la atribucion de agarrar mi porton cerrarlo y ponerle cadenas sin quemar cauchos ni nada porque vengo creado del pedagogico de eso quemar cauchas trancar calles en robar carros quemar carros quemar motos caerle a palo a los polciias y a la guardia y a llevar palo tambien vengo de esa formacion y la aplique aqui pero decentemente porque no puedo agarrar a unas personas de 50 60 anios y los voy a poner a zumbar piedras" (Luis, pag 21 line 32).

not how people think or talk about it. This stress even shapes our interview. He also reproduces the issue of student movements in Venezuela212. It is interesting how positive his experience at the Pedagogical Institute was, according to his own statements, but now while at Mission Sucre, he suddenly remembers that he participated in a variety of protests and demonstrations, where he even experienced violence and even risked being sent to prison. I can interpret this as a way to stigmatize the time before the Bolivarian Revolution when students were victimized by law enforcement. One could also interpret this as a way for him to show that he is a revolutionary and even critical to positioning himself as someone who does not just approve everything that the government does. He was not satisfied about some issues when he joined the Mission but it was possible for him to organize peaceful protests, given that the system is closer to the people now and the demographics of the Mission.

It is not clear what his problem was but from the analysis of the interview it seems that it had something to do with the professors and their expertise in certain areas. It becomes clear at a later point in the interview that beyond the matter of teacher quality, Luis had to cope with the stress of uncertainty about the sustainability of his study program because of drop-out rates. Luis claims to offer a ride to several students every day after classes. The car belongs to his mother, which means that it is not very clear to what extent his study process at Mission Sucre continues to represent a joint family effort. He argues that he does it because he understands the danger of walking around at night but also because he is empathetic about the fact that many of those classmates work the whole day. Nevertheless, at a later stage of the same topic, he reflects on other reasons to help them:

*"And why do I do it? Because I do not want them to stop studying that older man that you saw he is a broadcaster and works for a radio station he works with that moreno who told you to go to the radio and look at how old he is he must be reaching his 70s and he had a stroke not so serious he stood up and kept studying we were 37 and now we are 8 left and those 8 I give them a ride and I have told them that if I have to bring them home I will but don't stop coming come in the evening wherever you can and I gladly give you a ride"*213

But what could seem to be an altruistic action is a concern in Luis experience because he says "I cooperate with the boys so they study because if they start

212 There are some interesting analyses about student movements in Venezuela. For more information on the matter see García- Guadilla and Mallén, 2010; Uzcátegui, 2014.

213 "¿Y por qué lo hago? Porque no quiero que dejen de estudiar ese señor que tu viste es locutor en una radio trabaja con ese moreno que te dijo que fueras a la radio trabajan juntos y ponte a ver cuantos años tiene ese debe estar pisando casi los 70 años le dio un ACV no tan grave se paró de ese ACV y siguió estudiando nosotros éramos 37 y quedamos 8 y esos 8 yo los llevo y yo les he dicho si es de llevarlos a su casa yo los llevo pero no dejen de venir vénganse en la tarde como puedan y yo con mucho gusto lo llevo" (Luis, page 12 line 31).

leaving they are going to close the semester and I cannot waste time I cannot stop during the seventh semester"214

Mission Sucre was created to offer alternatives for excluded groups but those groups have a variety of challenges the financial issue being one of the most relevant. At the beginning of the Mission scholarships were anticipated but this changed over the course of the program. Some arguments against this development are the fact that some people registered to collect the financial incentives and never went back, whereas others point out the financial unsustainability of the program because at different moments there are different funding sources. As a member of Mission Sucre Luis experienced this complex situation:

*"unfortunately we are almost 600 (students) at the Aldea and there are only 15 10 scholarships the last time they sent us 5 and the 600 of us have the right (to apply) but within our rights we have also duties and what are our duties? to be responsible and aware that if I have the chance to sustain myself financially then I don't have to apply for a scholarship"*215

Apart from his participation as a student, he also had the chance to experience what the life of a social communicator was like. At an advanced stage of his study program he started an internship, which is a normal practice for higher education students (Sánchez, 2005). In his case, yet, he felt that he had finally found where he wanted to be.

*"well I did my internship in the newspaper X where I have a written appreciation for being one of the few interns who have showed creativity who has not only done what he was supposed to but who had initiative who would look for journalist tasks nowadays from my office from my work my position I walk by the street with my voice recorder always and if I see something around and I do it I write it and I send it to the newspaper and they publish it"*216

214 "y yo a los muchachos les colaboro para que estudien porque si se me van retirando me van a cerrar el semestre y no puedo perder tiempo no me quiero quedar con el séptimo semestre" (Luis, page 13 line 13).

215 "lastimosamente nosotros en la aldea somos casi 600 y solamente te dan 15 10 becas las ultimas que nos mandaron fueron 5 y los 600 tenemos derecho pero dentro de nuestros derechos están nuestros deberes ¿cuáles son nuestros deberes? ser responsables y conscientes de que si yo tengo la posibilidad de mantenerme no tengo por qué querer solicitar esa beca" (Luis, page 24 line 16).

216 "bueno hice mis pasantias en el diario el nacionalista donde tengo un reconocimiento por escrto por el mismo periodico donde he sido uno de los pocos pasantes que han desarrollado una creatividad que no se guian solamente por sus tareas diarias sino que proponia salir a buscar distintos trabajos periodisticos hoy en dia desde mi oficina desde mi trabajo mi puesto yo ando por la calle con mi grabador siempre y veo algo por alli y lo hago lo escribo y se lo mando al periodico y lo sacan" (Luis, page 2 line 8).

It is clear in the previous excerpt how he presents an idealization of his role for the newspaper because he needs to reinforce his presentation of interest, how being a journalist was his true calling and how he was meant to be at a newspaper, that even without experience he managed to excel there. He takes this opportunity to show me that during his job as an intern he also had a similar experience like me:

*"During my internship I had the opportunity to interview a 85 year old lady from Mission Ribas and she was completing sixth grade. I had the opportunity to interview her during my internship I mean what does it say to you? Do those things tell you that things are being done badly in terms of education? No she told me son I with 85 years of age am going to continue to see what I achieve I expect to graduate from college and I know that nobody is going to give me a job but I want to see those degrees hung on the wall and that this serves as an example to my family"*217

Here, he confuses the terms because Mission Ribas is a high school program, whereas Mission Robinson is the one for primary school (D'Elia, 2006). The relevant matter is how he tries to answer my research question and reveals his view about the reforms. According to the discourse, that he is reproducing, the fact that people with 85 years old get to complete primary school means that everything is working out well. He raises in that anecdote what probably many people have in mind when participating at the Missions, namely that the degree in itself should be enough because the Missions might not meet the needs of the labor market.

The interview continued, and he kept offering me more details about his experience at the newspaper. He likes to write, and he requested an internship at that specific newspaper because it fit his interests. Since the moment he arrived, he felt more than just an intern. He was given a desk and he went out to the street with the aim of collecting material, either by assignment or by own initiative. The newspaper supported him in his study progress to a large extent, so he could complete his study program:

*"In the newspaper I was given the chance to do my internship in the morning and I could leave at 12 to go home and eat then I would go to work at 2 pm and at work I was given an hour to write my notes and send them to the Time by 5:30 pm so the press coordinator could rank them"*218

217 "yo tuve la oportunidad durante mis pasantías de entrevistar aquí a una señora de Misión Ribas que tenia 85 años y se estaba graduando de sexto grado con 85 años y tuve la oportunidad de entrevistarla en mis pasantías osea ¿qué te dice eso a ti? ¿Que se está haciendo mal el trabajo a nivel de educación? No me lo dijo de hecho hijo yo con 85 años voy a seguir a ver hasta donde llego espero graduarme de la universidad yo se que nadie me va a dar trabajo pero yo quiero ver esos títulos colgados en la pared y que eso le sirva de ejemplo a mi familia" (Luis, pag 6 line 8).

218 "el diario permitió de que yo en la mañana fuera a las pasantías a las 12 en punto me fuera a a mi casa a comer a los 2 estuviera en mi trabajo y en el trabajo me permitieron una hora para yo

It is reasonable to think that at his work at the ministry there is a great deal of flexibility for him to combine all his activities. But apart from working at the ministry and doing an internship at a newspaper, he was also elected at the student elections at the Aldea. After having coped with several setbacks as a student in previous institutions, he managed to become one of the leaders of the Aldea Universitaria, which could be an argument against my previous assertion about the disadvantage of placing Luis with people with lower cultural capital. Perhaps, offering him the chance to position himself as a social leader in that context has a very important value that should not be underestimated. During my field phase I had the chance to see a meeting between a student representative and the rest of the students in Zulia state and I could perceive the high status that this position gives to the person in charge, who plays a middle man role between the staff and the students.

Apart from his progress as an intern, he got involved with a great deal of community activities, which is on the regular curriculum at Mission Sucre. When discussing his experience with the community project he says219:

*"at the end of the semester you have to do community work in social communication we do workshops at the level of communication where we look for a specific site we look for professional of social communication one who talks about photography one who talks about cinematography one who talks about television one about radio we do not charge admission but we hand out invitations and give a credential (diploma) for assistance or we go to a community and bring social aid such as medicine or a Mercal (groceries at affordable prices) or legal advice we cover those events"*220

What Luis experienced can be understood in the framework of new conceptions about the role of higher education as presented in the World's Declaration for Higher Education in the 21st Century and the criticism that Venezuelan universities produced a great deal of research without much social value (Morales et al., 2012). Since the municipalization of higher education in 2003221 and the education law in 2009 the ideas of pertinence has been highly valued (Morales et al., 2012). During my data collection phase in Carabobo state I had the chance to go to a rural community where a group of law students were conducting their

escribir mis notas y enviarlas al nacionalista antes de las 5:30 pm para pasarla al coordinador de prensa que se encargaba de jerarquizar las notas que iban" (Luis, page 16 line 12).

219 Name of the thesis at Mission Sucre.

220 "al final del semestre tu tienes que hacer un trabajo comunitario bien sea en comunicacion social nosotros hacemos jornadas a nivel de comunicacion donde buscamos un sitio especifico buscamos profesionales de comunicacion social uno que te hable de fotografia uno que te hable de cine uno que te hable de televisión que te hablen de radio no cobramos entrada sino que repartimos invitaciones y damos una credencial de asistencia o vamos a una comunidad llevamos ayudas sociales medicina un mercal transito asesoria juridica nosotros cubrimos esos eventos (Luis, page 23 line 11)".

221 See chapter 6.

community project. What I could see there was what one can extract from Luis's quote, which is the complexity of the constructivist approach used at Mission Sucre. It may have a great impact when it comes to the lives of members of nearby communities where they are implemented.

Luis seems to have found what he was looking for at Mission Sucre both personally and academically. Of course, it would be important to wonder if his previous social and cultural capital had a tremendous influence on the way things worked out for him. In the final minutes of the interview he reflects from the present perspective on how long the road was until he reached the point of almost getting his bachelor's degree:

*"and next year if God wants I graduate in social communication those at a a very personal level are achievements that I can say since I started at Mission Sucre that I did what I have done and I will make it I do no longer depend on anyone on anybody's help I mean I looked for it and I will finish"*222

By the time of the interview he was in 7th semester of mass communication and was working for a governmental institution. By 2015, I had done some research on the internet and he managed to graduate in mass communication and he works for a Venezuelan foundation that belongs to the Ministry of Higher Education, where he probably started working before his arrival to Mission Sucre. He is working there as a journalist, according to articles that I have found on the internet published by him on behalf of this institutions. Apart from that, I managed to access his Twitter and LinkedIn account. In the former he introduces himself as a supporter of the government and shares mostly publications where one can see the accomplishments of the Bolivarian Revolution. In his LinkedIn account it is interesting that he shares information about his degree at the pedagogical institute but not about his time at the Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua. About his higher education degree, he writes that he studied at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, which was probably the institution that awarded the degree. However, it could indicate a way to avoid the stigma of having studied at Mission Sucre.

#### *<IP_ADDRESS> Structural features summary*

Luis Jiménez was born in the eighties, three decades after the beginning of the democratic period in Venezuela. He has brown skin and started his life in a rural area of the center of the country. Both his parents had academic backgrounds, and happened to work as school teachers at the time. He was brought into the world during an economic crisis, which has different effects on his family dynamics. The

222 "ya el año que viene si Dios quiere soy licenciado en comunicación social eso a nivel muy personal son logros que yo puedo decir desde que entre a la mision sucre que lo hice yo lo he hecho yo y lo voy a lograr yo ya no dependo de nadie de la ayuda de nadie osea lo busque yo y lo voy a terminar yo" (Luis, page 7 line 32).

fact that both parents were educators meant that he started his life in an academic environment and with likely high educational expectations. He was institutionalized early in his life, at the level before basic education, which is known as preschool. Luis's childhood isolated him from experiences with violence, crime, drugs or disease, which allowed him to enjoy a satisfactory school experience. There were early transitions, though, that shaped his childhood such as the migration from his small town to a bigger city. Since an early age and especially after their migration, he became socially aware of his own disadvantage for being a member of a financially underprivileged family. Luis continued his path toward high school in a period during which he discovered different interests, both in school and extracurricular activities. He had access to private high school institutions and over the course of his adolescence he developed an interest in sports and joined different sport teams. He kept going through school and acquired a set of skills and new horizons.

He finished high school after the expected schooling time. Around that time, he met a woman with whom he developed a long-term relationship until the present. Once he finished high school he decided to pursue university courses to become a dentist. However, his relationship with education was not straightforward and smooth and he experienced a complex transition, which was directly linked to his financial and geographical situation. He failed to achieve the necessary requirements to enter the odontology study program but tried to find other alternatives. He experienced a family separation, given that he decided to leave his city to look for other options at another city. Through his sports achievements, he managed to get a position at a Pedagogical Institute in a city nearby where he had family members, who supported him in that decision. While studying at the pedagogical institute he also had the chance to join different teams and to even represent his institution in a variety of competitions. During his time at this institution he found a job at a school for a full academic year, where he had the chance to try out his future professional perspectives. Another relevant issue at this time was his involvement with another woman with whom he had a child. He kept studying, despite the interpersonal challenges that he must have experienced, and managed to graduate in sports education. Nevertheless, when he graduated he did not seek any jobs in the profession he had a degree in.

After having experienced disillusionment, he spent some time looking for a path in his life. With the support and accompaniment of his life partner, he found another study program that raised his interest. This time, the study program was mass communication and it was offered by a private university, where his girlfriend was studying. He started mass communication at this new institution only to find himself unable to afford more semesters, due to the increase of tuition fees, which eventually forced him to drop out of the program. He relocated with his wife and spent some time without working or studying until he found a job at a ministry. He was made aware of a new chance to study through

the existence of a new higher education institutional arrangement known as Mission Sucre, which was a turning point in his life. He went through a bureaucratic process to get his previous academic achievements recognized but since that was not possible he had to start all over again. At Mission Sucre, he had an ambivalent experience because on the one hand he had to repeat many academic subjects that must have been below his level at the time. On the other hand, the fact that he had more experience and more cultural capital than his classmates allowed him to have an outstanding performance and to reach a leadership position within Mission Sucre in a short time. Nowadays, he keeps working for the government as a journalist to document the achievements of the current administration.

#### **Type A: Subtype Inclusion as redemption**

Representatives of Type A come from a consolidated household consisting of a family of academic parents. From an early age, the value of education was inculcated and there were strong educational expectations from his parents, who promoted him to go through different educational schemes. The willingness to move and to change constantly to improve his quality of life is a common pattern in the life of the representative of this type. Through a variety of experiences both positive and negative, the representative of this type develops a strong sensibility about social inequality and perceives the differences between achievement and misfortune through this analytical lens. When he has a goal, he is willing to do wherever it takes to achieve what he intends to and this is the case when it comes to his education trajectories. The members of this type have clearly identified the obstacles that have prevented them from achieving the goal but they keep trying. The search for alternatives was possible thanks to a variety of resources but above all through his persisting personality and intrinsic motivation. Even if he found different alternatives to develop a career, the obstacles to obtain a higher education degree in his desired field was experienced as a biographical crisis and he looked for explanations around him to make sense out of this experience. Even though he found alternatives in his life either through his own self-initiative or through external circumstances, he seemed to be attached to the idea of finishing what he started when he chose to go to the university. Type A positions himself as a member of an excluded group and sympathizes with those who have experienced deprivation, discrimination and exclusion, as he has. As a member of that group he sees a before and after in his own country because in the last couple of decades the issues of marginalization and exclusion have been an important part of the political debate in the country. He experienced a turning point in the Bolivarian Revolution when people like him started to have more opportunities and he either shares the goals of the revolution explicitly or sympathizes with those who do.

Among his motivations to go to the university there might be different aspects, such as social status, income, recognition but most likely achieving his goal is a process in itself. He had some personal and family resources that allowed him to keep struggling. Representatives of Type A are hardworking individuals willing to do different jobs to survive financially but they have the impression that they could do more. Inclusion to higher education, therefore, means for type A a chance to redeem oneself. By redemption I would like to use the standard definitions provided by the dictionary, which is to serve as compensation for a state of sinfulness and its consequences (thefreedictionary.com, 2015). I use the term redemption as inspired by the work of Dan McAdams (2005), who analyzes the stories Americans live by and discusses a particular pattern of telling stories of emancipation, suffering and transitions to happiness. Through access to Mission Sucre, type A has the chance to reassure himself that his previous inability to obtain a higher education was indeed a consequence of an unjust and unequal society and he can restore his feeling of self-worth because achieving his goal is possible now. After having experienced several attempts to study at the university, he perceives Mission Sucre as the materialization of his life project because Mission Sucre solved previous problems such as access, financial burdens and geographical inconvenience. The idea of education as salvation is not an isolated thought but it has been reinforced by different discourses and practices in the world in the last decades. One can trace some of these ideas back to different Venezuelan educational schemes with the cases of Fe y Alegría, the System223 and religious education institutions slogans. Outside Venezuela one can see different relevant manifestations of the use of education to address antisocial behavior, such as schools and reading programs at prisons or for street children. The same is true for campaigns by the UN and other organizations, where education is seen as the best solution to combat many problems around the globe and where the hopes pinned on education are similar to what Type A perceives as a new beginning. Moreover, the political discourse in the framework of the Bolivarian Missions reinforces this idea of education almost as a religious conversion for the lives of its participants.

223 The National System of Youth Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela also known as "the system" is a national initiative that started in 1975 to offer music instruction and practice as a tool for social and human development especially for children and youth from underprivileged environments. This initiative has been acknowledged as a mechanism to rescue children and young people from what otherwise could be a derailed life. It has even described as the Venezuelan musical miracle and its slogan "Tocar y luchar" means to play and to struggle. More information on the system (Elstner, 2011; Tunstall, 2013).

#### 7.1.2 Case reconstruction: Petra Pérez

#### *<IP_ADDRESS> Approach to the interviewee and interview context*

I interviewed Petra Pérez in May 2012. She was a darked-skin, 44-year-old woman who had six biological children and had worked for years as an unqualified worker until she started studying in 2009. When I met her, she was a student in the 5th semester of Agri-Food production at one Aldea Universitaria in Miranda State. Her program consisted of 6 semesters, which means that she was about to finish the curriculum for this technical program by the time we met. The interview took place at the Aldea Universitaria where she was studying at the coordinator's office, which meant that it was conducted at a comfortable, private place, but at the same time, we faced several interruptions during our conversation. The interview lasted for 1 hour 24 minutes and was conducted in Spanish.

This interview was one of those that I conducted during my first field trip in Venezuela. In the framework of my first field phase, I visited Miranda State224 . Miranda is located at the north central area of the country known as Venezuela's Coastal Range. One important characteristic of this area is the mountains that run along Venezuela's coast. This state covers some parts of Caracas, where 36 % of the population of the state live. Furthermore, the latest census showed that this state is the second highest populated area of the country with a total of 2.675.165 inhabitants and with the highest percentage of African descendants (Fasanella, 2012).

The place where the Aldea is located is at approximately 1 hour away from Caracas and is near Higuerote, which is a famous beach destination in the region. This area is well-known because many inhabitants of nearby cities such as Caracas spend their holidays in its many beaches, in apartment complexes or at beach clubs in this place. I drove there myself on a Saturday and after spending a half day at the Aldea, I returned to Caracas the same day. The facilities were relatively new and contrary to many other Aldeas that I visited, this was the kind of Aldea Universitaria that was built specially for Misión Sucre225. When one arrives, one has the impression of being at a high school, because of its distribution and the lack of many facilities that would normally belong on a Venezuelan university campus. Given its geographical location next to the beach, the temperatures were very high and humid. A quick overview gives the impression that the majority of students there were of African descendent and without having official statistics one could argue at first glance that most students were over the regular age for higher education students, consistent with the official discourse of Mission Sucre.

224 For more information about the field phase in Venezuela see chapter 4.

225 See the chapter 6 about Mission Sucre.

I met the coordinator of the Aldea226 and she kindly showed me the facilities and told me some statistical facts orally. As she walked me through the place, she greeted many of the students. The relationship between staff members and students was horizontal, and one could perceive a high level of involvement among them. The day I was there, there was a special event on the Aldea's premises and many people were gathered, playing sports and there was even a community project presentation227. Once I explored all the facilities and attended the presentation, I asked the coordinator if I could interview one of the students. She asked me to talk about my project in some classrooms and many people asked me questions about what I was doing. Every time I talked about my project I received a similar reaction. Many of them expressed to me their feeling of having been ignored in the past and they were pleased to see that through my work many people could find out about their experiences and collective stories of exclusion, discrimination and impossibility before the revolution. Among some of the students who I talked to, I met Petra Pérez228 and I asked her if she would be willing to let me interview her. She said yes, and we were given the coordinator's office for the interview.

After four minutes, we were interrupted by the coordinator of the Aldea Universitaria and another professor who entered the room. The former explained to me that she had to leave the Aldea to take care of some political tasks and we spent some minutes talking about personal issues. The interesting thing about this interruption was that I had the impression that they explicitly wanted me to see their political loyalties. But I could also see this as a control mechanism because they probably also wanted to see how the interview was going.

Once I tried to continue with the interview, a second interruption occurred. A second professor entered the room again to tell me that her daughter wanted to go to Germany and she started to ask me questions about Germany. This was a little bit annoying but I had to speak to her for a couple of minutes and she asked me where I lived and if we could talk more about Germany. She mentioned some facts she knew about Germany and told me that she liked sausages probably to show me that she knew what she was talking about. We exchanged numbers and e-mails and I offered my help to guide her daughter if she ever came to Germany. Again, I had to help my interview partner remember what she was telling me before the interruption. Once we finished the interview I left the Aldea Universitaria.

226 Her contact data had been facilitated by the state's coordinator whom I met in Caracas.

227 In Mission Sucre, this is the name given to what would be a Bachelor's thesis.

228 Pseudonym.

#### *<IP_ADDRESS> Self-presentation*

This interview was one of the most challenging interviews and one of the longest self-presentations that I had (20 minutes). Petra mostly limited her life story to her educational and work trajectories and it could be said that, throughout the first part of the interview, the main text sorts used were argumentation and description. Furthermore, her way of telling the story made it difficult for me to lead the second part of the interview, because of her disorganized style and the drastic changes in topics and periods of her life. Her interest of presentation can be formulated as the following thematic field "my life overcoming obstacles and injustice as a hard-working mother while being involved with others and trying to succeed". After my opening question, she started her life story by saying "we could narrate a part of my life as an adventure kind of a change"229 .

After such a statement, it was clear she was attempting to legitimize herself as a proper interview partner because she had a complex story to tell. She might have also started like that to position herself as an experienced person who was about to share her experiences with a young interviewer like me. One hypothesis is also that she wanted me to know that I was talking to an optimistic person who is going to narrate a movie-like kind of life experience. Her attitude towards me was very open and she showed me a great deal of enthusiasm and humor. This was followed by a very rich description of her time at school, probably to adapt to my research interest or to avoid more personal topics. She also mentioned a variety of experiences as a child where she had contact with nature. Through these first years of her life she proceeded to present her educational experience as a normal and satisfactory phase and interestingly she did not mention her family or any significant person in her life.

Apart from her life as a student, the issue of community involvement was important in her self- presentation. There was an apparent need to provide me with as many examples as possible of how she struggled against all odds and did things for others as well as for her own good. One can interpret that as a way to convey that she was a natural leader but there is an interesting contradiction, she seems to try to present herself as a sociable person, yet, she elaborates on her life from a "by myself" perspective. The years passed by in her story line and there was no information about her family environment, friends or colleagues.  At this point one can formulate some hypotheses: She wanted to keep framing her life in a tough context230 but somehow mention her strong will to overcome all obstacles. It is also plausible to interpret this as a way to position herself as a member of a lower-class, and a

229 "Ehh podríamos contar relatar parte de mi vida como una aventura una aventura a lo un cambio" (Petra, page 1 line 3).

230 One example of this is that she told me that she did not have an email account.

natural leader who is a member of a community where everybody helps everybody to compensate many privations. That need to stress her social commitment and sensibility could also be because of me. She probably felt the need to describe the life of a little town because I am from the capital city and she wanted me to understand how things worked there.

As her self-presentation went on, I realized that the supposition of my influence as a researcher on her presentation style became stronger. She reinforced the picture of a dramatic environment and her willingness to do whatever it takes to fulfill her goals. Her story kept changing from present to past and from singular to plural as a way to show me the poor quality of life that she had to put up with but that it was not necessarily only her experience, but one of other people as well. Through this, the image of a resilient hard-working woman who overcame all kinds of obstacles was clear.

One can identify two different themes in her self-presentation. One was telling me about many life experiences to highlight her difficulties. The second thematic field was about her political views. She started this second theme while mentioning her early encounters with some teachers who were communists and who were not happy about the country's situation when she was younger. This allowed her to mix both levels: her life and the context. She showed me, to some extent, her willingness to get involved in change, which is understandable in a person, who has experienced so many limitations in her life.

Through this logic, she linked her life to the political movements that were occurring at the same time in Venezuela, and positioned herself as a revolutionary woman who followed leftist ideologies. Up to this point, she was trying to show me one injustice after another and she brought to the interview the issue of social inequality and reproduced the discourse on elites before the revolution and how ordinary citizens like her were oppressed and had no rights in the past. All the previous experiences allowed her to come back to politics and talk about a new struggle: the Bolivarian revolution. This long evaluation full of many details and a hard to follow historical background introduced the reasons why the revolution started according to her perspective. She tried to show me how her struggle was shared by many people who belong to her social class and how plausible the rise of Hugo Chávez from an outsider position to power was. Nonetheless, she also kept reinforcing the image of a social leader who was important in the region and who played an important role for the Venezuelan transition because thanks to their support President Chávez, managed to win the elections.

As a last topic, she talked about her present and listed all the things that had been achieved, and mentioned different plans and projects that the people of Barlovento now have because there are more possibilities than in the past. She talked about the present from an optimistic perspective to show me the before and after in her life story and her social leader vocation was clear. The first part of the interview made me feel somehow uncomfortable because she avoided her life story in order to deliver political propaganda, and despite my efforts during the second phase of the interview this pattern remained in what made me feel that instead of getting an authentic interview as herself, I interviewed a representative of the Bolivarian Revolution.

### *<IP_ADDRESS> Reconstruction of Petra's life history*

#### **Family background and childhood**

Petra Pérez was born in 1967 in the south of Barlovento in a small town called Torres231. During the interview she did not elaborate much on her childhood. She was born in a rural environment in the first decade of the democratic period, which started in Venezuela after the fall of the right-wing dictatorship headed by Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958. Since the Venezuelan independence in the 19th Century, the country had gone through waves of rebellion, dictatorships, revolutions and wars, which means that the beginning of democracy took place in an environment of social heterogeneity and political instability (Rey, 1991). This decade in Venezuela was ambivalent in terms of the coexistence of conflict and polarization232 but was also characterized by growth and the improvement of living conditions for many233. As a matter of fact, the first period of Venezuelan democracy was characterized by a high degree of uneasiness. This was a result of the economic crisis of the time, and also due to the conspiracies and coup attempts by members of extreme right military groups and left-wing guerrilla groups (Rincon and Fernandez, 2006). Despite the sociopolitical conflicts, the 1960s saw a great deal of change, development and growth for Venezuela from an economic perspective, which had important repercussions for the quality of life and the demographic transition of this Latin American nation. An unprecedented process of industrialization, then, started in the country (Araujo, 2010) and in a relatively short period Venezuela saw the creation of roads, infrastructure, basic industries, housing projects and the expansion of the education and health systems (Banko, 2007). These facts are relevant because the first decades of democracy meant an expectation of a new life style for many people and the accelerated transition from rural to urban arrangements through a policy of redistribution of wealth and the creation of a democratic state.

In fact, the process of urbanization meant that by 1950 49% of households had a water supply. This was accompanied by the decline of illiteracy and the increase of both education and life expectancy (Ledezma et al., 2007). This

231 Pseudonym.

232 The Cold War had started since the end of World War Two and since then the world had been in a state of constant confrontation between two ideological extremes. This division was also clear in Latin America, due to the Cuban revolution in 1959 and the proximity of other countries to the United States.

233 More on the beginning of the democratic period in chapter 5.

improvement of living standards in Venezuela was preceded by legislative reforms, such as the constitutional reform of 1961, enacted three years after the beginning of the democratic period. This constitution made the commitment toward the establishment of a Social State based on the rule of law and the human guarantees of health, education and social benefits among other things explicit (Rincón and Fernández 2006).

Barlovento234, the region where Petra came into the world in the 1960s belongs to Miranda state. Miranda state is of great importance in the field of agriculture whereas Petra's region (Barlovento) is also known for its beaches and its African American dances. The population of Venezuela between 1961 and 1971 was between 7 million and 10 million and Miranda by 1971 had 856.272 inhabitants (Siso, 2012). From a demographic perspective, it has been characterized by a mixture of ethnical groups with the presence of indigenous, Spanish and African slaves (De La Cruz and Flores, 2011). However, Díaz-Campos and Clements (2006) doubt this kind of mixture was prevalent in the past, given that nowadays the region's majority is of African descendent. In fact, Barlovento is known for its African roots, drum ensembles, veneration of saints and drum dancing (Brandt, 2007). In the Venezuelan imaginary the name Barlovento reminds one of a traditional merengue song composed by Eduardo Serrano in the late 1930s which describes the place as a "burning land of drums"235 .

Torres, the town where Petra was born, was founded in the premises of a cacao farm. This place is located two hours away from Caracas but it remained "isolated for about 200 years until it was connected to the country's road system" (Arends et al., 1978). Information about the population back then in Torres varies according to the source but some authors talk about between less than 1.000 and 1.500 inhabitants (Izard, 1996). During the self-presentation she did not mention any family members or background whatsoever. After being questioned in the second part of the interview about her family roots, she expressed her difficulty to elaborate on the matter

*"Oh! That is hard that is hard because I am not a natural daughter with a father and a mother I am an adopted child, given that my real mother I never knew about her but after I was 18 years when I met her uhm my father a great scientist he was the one who*

234 Barlovento means "from where the wind comes" in maritime terms according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). Since the colonization of Venezuela this has been one of the main areas for cacao production in the country (Calvani, 2001).

235 This song written from the perspective of a man from Caracas describes the woman of this region as a woman who moves her body following the rhythm of different instruments and it describes the gathering of people around religious festivities such as the "baile de San Juán".

*built the network of water supply here in the Barlovento region and he used to work for a company called X"*236