Rumbas in the Barrio

This chapter presents an alternative example of the state-sponsored storytelling workshops conducted through the Misión Cultura program in Venezuela under the former radical leftist leader Hugo Chávez. The Misión Cultura provides an opportunity to examine what kinds of storytelling might be available in a context of heightened social movements and a state that has been rolling back neoliberalism. While the Misión Cultura promotes forms of subject-making and narrative based in dominant liberal tropes, it has also created openings for the telling of stories grounded in collective movements and struggles of everyday life that contain the seeds for more oppositional modes of agency.