ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the formation and mobilization of environmental actors in Venezuela, following the two theoretical perspectives of identity and strategy, which have been most significant in the literature on social movements. It presents a typology of the Venezuelan environmental organizations in order to assess their contribution to the creation of the new political culture and the generation of new political facts through mechanisms of symbolic effectiveness. The chapter discusses the role each environmental organization plays in the configuration of an informal network that serves as the space in which the state, political parties, the media, and other organizations of civil society articulate with each other. It focuses on the relation of the environmental network with other sociopolitical actors and on the form in which this environmental network has become a new actor and acquired its own identity in the changing sociopolitical context of Venezuela during the past thirty years.
