Cira was born in Zaragoza, the Spanish State. She comes from a humble background and describes her parents as dissidents, which was significant in the post-Franco dictatorship era. As a child, she lived in several places, primarily in Mallorca in the Països Catalans (Catalan Countries). At sixteen, her parents decided to move to the United States, where she attended high school. She experienced a profound culture shock in a society that seemed alien and individualistic to her. Nevertheless, she found a group of friends who would gather to read The Communist Manifesto.
“That was unusual in the United States in the 1990s.”
However, it wasn’t until college that she began to develop a political consciousness. During those years, she was involved in spaces with class consciousness, particularly antiwar struggles, anti-establishment initiatives, and solidarity with the Palestinian cause, though she doesn’t consider her involvement to have been activism in the strict sense.
“I had a scholarship to attend university. In that context, students like me who were in difficult financial circumstances organized ourselves.”
According to Cira, going to college in the United States is a privilege, and working-class people have three options: not going, taking on debt for the rest of their lives, or being lucky enough to receive a scholarship.
“I studied art history and museology. I was interested in contemporary art.”
She met her partner, Chris Gilbert, during her internships when she began working at a contemporary art gallery where he also worked. She then spent several years working in museums, where she had the opportunity to reflect on imperialism and question the US context itself through contemporary art.
“One reason I was interested in contemporary art was the discourse in intellectual and academic circles that criticized the system, though there was no activism. So, I started organizing exhibitions.”
They were exhibitions against war and gentrification. She remembers organizing one in Baltimore at a museum where she was director. It was located in a highly gentrified area in the city center. There, she collaborated with several artists to create a museum window installation showing how people’s homes in the ghetto were boarded up because they couldn’t afford to replace the glass. This aesthetic was characteristic of Baltimore’s neighborhoods yet remained hidden and unseen in the city center, one of the city’s wealthiest areas.
“It was a time when a strong antiwar movement was emerging and the contemporary art world offered freedom of criticism of the system. In hindsight, I can see that these freedoms were merely spaces through which the bourgeoisie cleaned up its image. In the United States, the art world has been co-opted by the liberal “progressive” bourgeoisie, which is satisfied with its superficial critique.”
Censorship in the World of “Freedoms”
Cira says the exhibition created problems for her as the museum’s director—problems that nearly cost her her job, though in the end she was not fired. Even if there were certain freedoms in the contemporary art world, that did not mean censorship was absent. Around that time, she recalls, her partner, Chris Gilbert, was invited to serve as a curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley. As a condition of taking the position, he asked to organize a series of exhibitions in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution. Having already visited Venezuela, he had seen what was taking shape there and felt it was important to present it in the United States. After the second exhibition, however, he was censored.
“That university is considered the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, which began there in the 1960s. Ironically, his exhibitions were being censored at the very university where that movement began. He resigned publicly, leaving it all behind to emigrate to Venezuela.”
Cira Pascual Marquina worked in galleries and museums from age twenty-two to thirty. While working as an art curator, she continued her activist work with Critical Resistance, an organization that supports political prisoners and individuals within the US prison system. She also met and collaborated with Black Panther activists through a reading group in Baltimore. She continued to speak out against gentrification and supported several worker-organizing efforts, including those of young workers at the Orioles’ stadium.
As Cira and Chris became more radicalized, they grew increasingly uncomfortable with the constraints and censorship of the art world’s institutions. They were also troubled by the imperialist system and by the fact that their US tax dollars were funding wars against people around the world.
A New Beginning, a Revolution, and a Home
Chris and Cira were already familiar with Venezuela. Since 2004, Chris had been closely connected with Catia TV, a community television station in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas. In fact, one of the exhibitions he organized in Berkeley focused on that very experience with grassroots media. They were both deeply interested in the Bolivarian Revolution and its intense political and social upheaval. After resigning in 2006, Chris moved to Venezuela, and Cira joined him shortly afterward.
Cira remembers those early years with great affection. She describes that period as a beautiful and extraordinary time when people were deeply mobilized and sustained grassroots organizing efforts in their communities while openly debating socialism.
They arrived without any job offers. At the time, however, President Hugo Chávez had just founded the Bolivarian University of Venezuela (UBV), which challenged elitism in Venezuelan academia and the barriers that prevented working-class individuals from accessing higher education. When the new university began hiring faculty, they both applied. Cira started as a language instructor and later taught in the Political Studies program.
Since arriving in Caracas, they have lived in working-class neighborhoods such as the 23 de Enero parish and Manicomio [asylum], the latter named after the Caracas Psychiatric Hospital located there. They recall joking about how the loud music kept them from sleeping at night or concentrating during the day. Caracas—and Venezuela as a whole—is a deeply musical place, with a defiant fondness for high decibel levels.
“Since we arrived, we have lived entirely off our work as professors and researchers. We have no backroom connections or ties to NGOs or institutions. We’re committed to the Bolivarian process and believe that we should work alongside our class and learn from the grassroots organizing happening around us.”
Cira valued the fact that the Bolivarian Revolution had already been underway for seven years by the time they arrived, with strong popular organizations such as the Water Technical Roundtables, the Urban Land Committees, and the newly established Communal Councils already in place. For her, it was a time of great political strength when people approached them to discuss community projects. She also laughs when she remembers that they may have been somewhat naïve at the time.
“At first, when we got on a local minibus and heard people shouting, ‘La parada, la parada!’ (‘Stop here, stop here!’), we thought they were saying “Camarada, camarada!” (“Comrade, comrade!”). It was a beautiful moment, and we thought that everyone was fully committed to the cause and that this was the perfect revolution.”
Cadre School
In 2007, Cira and Chris created a Marxist education and discussion program at Catia TV, a community television station. Cira recalls that the idea to launch the project with her partner stemmed from their need to study and the urgent need to create spaces where revolutionary activists could learn and debate. Although she already had a history of political struggle at the time, she did not yet fully identify as a Marxist. That came later.
“Catia TV had excellent recording facilities. The studios were well-equipped, and we had a lot of freedom. We started producing a weekly program in which we discussed texts and ideas from the Marxist tradition. We’d invite someone to be the teacher and educate ourselves through the conversation.”
The program later joined the lineup of ViVe TV, a public nationwide channel focused on education and culture. It remained there until the start of the pandemic, when operational difficulties stemming from the crisis caused by US sanctions and the economic war made continuing production of the program impossible.
Nevertheless, Cira and Chris carried on with the project and began broadcasting it on YouTube. This resulted in a loss of popularity in Venezuela because ViVe TV’s over-the-air signal had allowed the program to reach every corner of the country without an internet connection.
Together, they have kept Escuela de Cuadros going without interruption, and it has become a leading educational resource not only in Venezuela but elsewhere as well. It has provided a space for self-education for thousands of activists in a range of contexts. The program has featured theorists and intellectuals such as Néstor Kohan, Atilio Boron, Theotônio dos Santos, Marta Harnecker, Armando Bartra, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Marcello Musto, and Claudio Katz, among many others.
“The last program we made was a hit. We recorded it with Néstor Kohan. It has close to 75,000 views, which is impressive for what we call a ‘Marxist education brick.’”
Telling the Story of the Commune and Everyday Life
In 2016, during the harshest years of the economic crisis (2016–2019), Cira launched the print newspaper PolitiK. It was a time of severe shortages, profiteering, and material hardship that is still remembered by everyone in Venezuela. The newspaper was created to analyze everyday life and the national political situation.
“I can’t tell my life story without talking about those difficult years. The economic war waged against the Venezuelan people was devastating. People often speak about it casually, but there is hard evidence. For example, a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a research institute in Washington, D.C., concluded that around 40,000 people died between 2017 and 2018 alone as a direct result of the imperialist blockade against Venezuela.”
She remembers that period as a time of great confusion, when the government temporarily moved away from the vision of popular power and turned to pragmatic measures to address the crisis. It was trying to meet the material needs of people struggling to survive amid shortages of food and medicine caused by the blockade and US pressure.
Amidst all this, organized communities once again began to promote the commune as a collective means of overcoming hardship. PolitiK provided a critical analysis in support of these communal efforts and promoted ideological discourse during that time. Cira says that, fortunately, around 2021, the Bolivarian government corrected its course. It once again recognized the organizing power of the commune and returned to Chávez’s guidance in his historic “Golpe de Timón” (“Strike at the Helm”) speech.
During the years of the PolitiK project, Cira and her partner, fellow activist Chris Gilbert, dedicated themselves to studying and recounting the story of the commune. Cira recalls that, when Chávez formally and emphatically proposed the communal project in 2009, the country had substantial oil revenues. Oil was selling at a high price, and Venezuela was producing three million barrels per day. The revolutionary government could use these revenues to meet the material needs of the majority.
“There wasn’t an urgent need to reorganize in a radically different way. Although initiatives such as the El Panal 2021 Socialist Commune began in 2006 and El Maizal Commune began in 2009, these efforts were still very decentralized. There hadn’t yet been a nationwide surge in communal organizing. This occurred when empty store shelves made the need for a stronger form of organization clear.”
Cira often says that, having traveled around the country, she can attest that the model for the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAP) [boxes with food items at affordable prices] originated in several communes in the eastern region of Yaracuy and in Caracas before CLAP became a government-led initiative.
“They organized collective purchasing and exchanges between communes to ensure people had access to food. In El Panal, for example, they named one of these initiatives the Ficha Consumo. The state later adopted and expanded these grassroots experiences of popular power nationwide.”
Communal Resistance to the Imperialist Blockade
Cira encourages others to write precisely because she wasn’t born with an “innate gift” for it and didn’t regularly write. She says she started writing as an adult, gradually developing her skills. Through steady practice and self-education, as well as political activism, she gradually gained the tools to bring Venezuela’s grassroots experiences to light.
Around the same time as PolitiK, she was invited to join Venezuelanalysis as a writer. She worked there from 2018 to 2025, when she resigned due to her profound political disagreements with the outlet’s editorial stance. This editorial line continues today. Her first interviews in that outlet were with leaders of the communes. For her, documenting the communal experience has been a fundamental part of her life as an organic intellectual.
“In the communes, people think, theorize, imagine, and build. However, there are so many tasks, commitments, challenges, and problems in our society that many people simply don’t have the time to document their experiences.”
Since 2021, Cira and Chris have documented more than twenty farming, fishing, indigenous, and urban communes across the country. With logistical support from the Venezuelan Anti-Blockade Observatory, they have compiled these accounts in the collection Communal Resistance to the Imperialist Blockade. Through their writing, they present the diverse experiences and leadership within these communes, as well as the voices of those who organize to sustain and care for them.
“The commune is a heroic creation of the Venezuelan people.”
Militant with the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force
Cira is connected to the organization that drives the development of communal life in the El Panal 2021 Commune in the 23 de Enero neighborhood. In 2007, just a few months after arriving in Venezuela, she visited El Panal for the first time. One of her comrades from that time, who is now a member of the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force, remembers that meeting perfectly. A few years later, Cira joined a solidarity organizing group that supported the Colombian people through the Continental Bolivarian Movement (MCB). Together, they hosted a program on Radio Arsenal 98.1 FM, a community radio station based in El Panal and supported by the Alexis Vive organization.
She had always felt a strong affinity for Alexis Vive because of its commitment to caring for the territory and the collective, its Marxist identity, and its dedication to building communes. During the pandemic, while doing political education work with its members, she finally decided to join the organization formally.
Cira became a popular educator at the Pluriversity of the Greater Homeland. There, she leads political education spaces for members and supports the internationalist work of both the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force and the El Panal commune. Additionally, she helps coordinate solidarity brigades to Venezuela and visits by internationalists to the community, fostering connections with other communities.
For Cira, it is essential to highlight the communal project—not to idealize it, but to recognize all that has been built over the years, all that has been fought for and won, and all that remains to be done—to nurture hope and shape the future.
“We live in a deeply contradictory society and an economically dependent country under relentless imperialist siege. The government has had to make enormous concessions. Nevertheless, despite everything we see, the communal project can truly offer solutions. In a commune, people can dream, which is generally not allowed under capitalism.”
A Bridge for Internationalist Solidarity
Cira has become an internationally recognized voice, drawing attention to the many dimensions of grassroots organizing in Venezuela. Born abroad and maintaining ties to the United States, the Catalan Countries, and Euskal Herria (the Basque Country), she was called to document and systematize experiences of popular power. Over her years as a resident of Venezuela and a member of the popular movement, she has worked from within to do so. Her English-language writing reaches an English-speaking audience, helping readers learn about Venezuela’s communal organizing history firsthand.
After reading her work in English and Spanish, activists from Argentina, Galicia, Catalonia, the Basque Country, France, the United States, and elsewhere began contacting her to learn more about El Panal and to visit the community. She says that more than 1,000 internationalists visited last year alone. At a time when the global left is desperately searching for concrete examples, Cira believes that Venezuela’s communes offer real glimpses of a model capable of meeting people’s needs, despite what remains to be built.
She emphasizes, however, the importance of not mistaking the communal project for an autonomist undertaking that becomes isolated. In her view, Venezuela’s experience recognizes the need for productive capacity and state support to sustain the struggles necessary to keep the project going.
Throughout her years of activism and with her profound humanity, Cira Pascual Marquina has proven to be a natural educator. She never turns down a conversation and is never patronizing when presenting her arguments. She shares her views in every space in which she is active and always makes time for friendship. She is always busy yet always available for life, activism, solidarity, and love.
Source: Ceiba
Translated from Spanish by The Assembly Media team.
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