Cecosesola

Establishment

In 1967, members of a number of cooperatives in the Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto established CECOSESOLA, a second-tier cooperative which would provide social services to its affiliate cooperatives and their members. It was initially founded specifically to organize affordable funerals, a service which had long been neglected by the city's private sector. CECOSESOLA members saw the organization as a means to provide their communities with cheap goods and services, with the ultimate goal of accelerating social change.

Bus conflict

Between 1974 and 1976, CECOSESOLA launched a public transport bus service in Barquisimeto. Working together with community organizations, it established the bus service's routes and schedules based on the community's needs. Over the course of the late 1970s, the service achieved marked success due to its cheap fares. The bus cooperative rapidly grew to count about 300 workers, and operated 127 buses. As it was the first service offered by CECOSESOLA that was available for use by the wider community, not just its own members, the organization sought to bring together the workers and the service's users. The cooperative held popular assemblies to organize and support the burgeoning public service.

By 1979, the bus service had brought CECOSESOLA into conflict with the municipal government. The local council demanded that CECOSESOLA align its tariffs with those of other public transport providers. When they refused, the council revoked the subsidy for CECOSESOLA's public transit operations. CECOSESOLA reacted by calling a bus strike and organising political demonstrations, while the state government attempted to use the media to influence public opinion in their favor. In 1980, the conflict culminated with the municipal police arresting several CECOSESOLA workers and confiscating their buses. CECOSESOLA responded by appealing to other cooperatives for support and pleading to Congress for the return of their buses. 140 days after the buses were seized, the municipality was handed a court order to return the buses to CECOSESOLA. At the same time, after a group of CECOSESOLA bus workers had unsuccessfully demanded a pay rise and the right to establish a trade union, they began spreading rumors about irregularities in the cooperative's administration. Although an independent investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing, it caused an increase of public mistrust of and internal conflict within the organization.

Organizational changes

Although the bus conflict was brought to an end, it caused massive losses for CECOSESOLA and many of its buses were no longer in working order. Meanwhile, in response to the internal dispute with the bus workers, 70 cooperatives and 160 workers had also left the CECOSESOLA network. This provoked a restructuring of CECOSESOLA: the organization's remaining workers decided that, from then on, the network would only make use of internal financing rather than accepting external subsidies; they also sought to promote greater participation in decision-making, encouraging workers to attend regular meetings and build social connections between themselves. By 1983, the workers of CECOSESOLA had abolished their internal hierarchy, dissolving the executive and supervisory boards, and replaced it with a system of workers' self-management. The workers themselves then implemented a system of consensus decision-making, job rotation and equal pay for equal work. In making these changes, the workers hoped to foster a spontaneous order, in which mutual trust and solidarity would guide workers' behavior. The changes made then would eventually be formalised in the organization's bylaws in 2002.

CECOSESOLA workers formulated a critique of the existing social order and hierarchical forms of organization, which they contrasted with their own mechanisms of self-management. They came to consider capitalism and consumerism to be expressions of the most individualistic aspects of Western culture, in which people sought to accumulate wealth and power for themselves at the expense of others. Workers explicitly framed the CECOSESOLA as an alternative to the existing social order and as a vehicle for social change. They began to set collective criteria for the organization, prioritizing long-term social benefits over short-term profits. These criteria were regularly reevaluated through a consensus process, often in response to internal problems or external crises. Individual workers were also empowered to make quick decisions, which would then be reported at their weekly meetings, to ensure they cohered with the collective criteria, and criticised if they belied individualistic attitudes.

Growth

As the organization's internal culture and practices increasingly distinguished itself from the existing social order, it came under attack from the local government, mass media and its economic competition. In response, CECOSESOLA workers sought to develop a support network among like-minded organizations and to grow the organization into a significant part of the regional economy, which would make it "too big to fail". Following the collapse of the bus service, in 1983, CECOSESOLA relaunched by establishing food markets in the city's poorest neighbourhoods and food deserts. This brought together the network's agricultural cooperatives with its urban consumer cooperatives, with markets being held every weekend from Friday to Sunday. By meeting this underserved section of the market, CECOSESOLA experienced rapid growth and gained legitimacy in Barquisimeto. The organization of the food markets was carried out horizontally, with the people who participated in the decision-making process carrying out those decisions themselves.

Although the organization had no interest in expanding beyond its home city, it worked with other initiatives to establish cooperative markets in Bolivia, Colombia and Egypt, and invited journalists and researchers from around the globe to visit their operations. Using their growing influence in the local economy and the media, CECOSESOLA negotiated with multinational companies and the government to provide them with access to necessary commodities such as fertilizer. Through constant communication between its members and the wider community, CECOSESOLA gained enough societal legitimacy that 95% of community members were reported to have said they would defend the cooperative if it were under threat.

Following the Bolivarian Revolution of 1999, CECOSESOLA also built ties with officials in Hugo Chávez's government and lobbied them to reform the country's law on cooperatives by repealing the requirement for them to have executive or supervisory boards. When the law was amended in 2001, they said that the old law had prevented them from taking a major role in societal development. Over the course of the early 21st century, CECOSESOLA established an international network, connecting itself with like-minded movements. CECOSESOLA has emphasised the overlap between its practice of workers' self-management and the Chávez government's socialist programme, as well as the model of Neozapatismo in Mexico and the political philosophy of José Mujica in Uruguay. The organization has also sent workers to North America and Europe to exchange their knowledge with cooperatives in other parts of the world. CECOSESOLA workers emphasised that, by creating a comprehensive system of social services, they were "reclaiming the right to enjoy a better quality of life".

As of 2014, the CECOSESOLA network counted 29 affiliated cooperatives and about 20 community organizations The CECOSESOLA network grows, processes and sells its own food to the wider community, provides health care, credit and funerals for its members, distributes home appliances and organizes community education in its local area. The network runs farmers' markets, clinics, blood testing laboratories, savings banks, money lending and insurance operations, and a hospital, all of which are organized as worker cooperatives. Although some cooperatives focus on a single sector, most CECOSESOLA affiliates have diversified their activities across multiple sectors. Of the organization's 20,000 members: 1,000 are organized into worker cooperatives, 18,700 into consumer cooperatives and 300 into producer cooperatives. Each member organization is independently self-managed and linked together with others through a federative system.