VENUZUELA—Venezuela President Hugo Chavez was reported to be improving after experiencing serious unexpected bleeding following a six-hour operation for his recurring cancer in Cuba on Tuesday, Dec. 11.
Because of his bold opposition to U.S. imperialism and declared commitment to socialism, Chavez is much beloved by the majority of the people of Venezuela and by oppressed and freedom-loving people everywhere.
This was shown in the recent Venezuelan presidential election when hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters, all dressed in red shirts, came out to rally for Chavez, creating a sea of red in the streets of the capital city Caracas.
Chavez, as the leader of the country’s United Socialist Party that coordinates Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” easily defeated his rival, the neocolonial Henrique Capriles.
Scheduled to begin a new six-year term in January following his victory, Chavez stated that tests he had undergone in Cuba in November found further “malignant cells,” adding that he was currently in significant pain.
Acknowledging the possibility that he may not be able to continue his term as president, Chavez named as his successor his Vice President Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver and party leader whose humble background is a glaring contrast to the successful politicians in the U.S. and other capitalist countries where billions are spent by the bourgeoisie to purchase the politicians of their choice.
Venezuela, under Chavez, along with Cuba, its closest ally, has been instrumental in uniting the majority of the South American countries under what is called the “pink tide” of Latin American and Caribbean unity.
Chavez led in using Venezuela’s oil resources to not only uplift the masses of the people but also to build a powerful economic and political power block pushing back the brutal U.S. colonial domination that has oppressed the region for centuries.
Known as North America’s “back yard,” the U.S. backed generations of some of the most vile and deadly neocolonial regimes.
Chavez’s leadership has deepened the current crisis of imperialism, described so often by African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela, as resulting from the resistance of African and other colonized peoples around the world who make up the pedestal upon which parasitic capitalism rests.
The resistance of oppressed peoples is preventing parasitic capitalism from stealing the resources from the rest of the world with impunity.
Chavez arose from the viciously oppressed African and Indigenous working class
Born in 1954 into a rural impoverished family of African and Indigenous heritage, Chavez rose up through the ranks of the Venezuelan army.
He was assigned to a counterinsurgency unit fighting leftist guerrillas. During this period he came upon the books of Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong and others.
“By the time I was 21 or 22,” Chavez stated, “I made myself a man of the left.”
In Peru in 1977, as a young military officer Chávez heard a presentation by the leftist president, General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1910–1977), and was inspired by Velasco's ideas that the military should act in the interests of the working classes.
In 1977, Chavez founded a revolutionary movement within the armed forces, with the goal of installing a leftist government in Venezuela. His group was called the Venezuelan People's Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación del Pueblo de Venezuela, or ELPV).
In the early 1980s, Chavez founded the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) with the goal of overthrowing the neocolonial regime in Venezuela.
Chavez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup against the regime of president Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned.
After his release two years later, he founded the Fifth Republic Movement and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998.
He subsequently introduced a new constitution which increased democratic rights for the working class and altered the structure of the Venezuelan government and was re-elected in 2000.
During his second presidential term, Chavez introduced a system of Bolivarian Missions, Communal Councils and worker-managed cooperatives, as well as a program of land reform.
He also nationalized key industries, including the lucrative oil industry.
In April 2002, the U.S. orchestrated a coup attempt against Chavez using anti-Chavez military officers along with reactionary upper and middle class Venezuelans loyal to the previous neocolonial regime.
The coup leaders imprisoned Chavez in the presidential palace with a reactionary neocolonial force declaring himself president.
This prompted about two million determined Venezuelan supporters of Chavez to storm the palace, release Chavez and reinstate him as president of Venezuela.
U.S. attacks on the Bolivarian Revolution
Last year Chavez raised the possibility that the U.S. had infected him with cancer which came at the same time that five other leaders in the region were also diagnosed with the disease, including Fidel Castro of Cuba, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and former President Luiz Lula Da Silva along with Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo.
Chavez cited the CIA chemical “experiments” on the people of Guatemala in the 1940s as an example of U.S. biological warfare.
This is something that the African community is familiar with. For example, the Tuskegee medical assault experimented on African people by infecting them with syphilis from the 1930s to the 1970s.
We also recognize the clear evidence that imperialist forces murdered Arafat, whose body has recently been exhumed for autopsy.
Ghana’s first independent president, Kwame Nkrumah and the revolutionary writer Franz Fanon also died under highly suspicious circumstances leading many to believe they were poisoned by the U.S.
Inside the U.S., we are locked into a bourgeois “choice” between two sectors of the imperialist ruling class, but Hugo Chavez ran decidedly on the side of the oppressed and working class by expressing the ideals of socialism.
Unlike the U.S.-backed Arab regimes which use oil profits to enrich themselves, Chavez carried out a plan to use the oil profits to uplift and empower the formerly colonized workers with education, jobs, housing and food.
The Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela is a key part of the deepening crisis of imperialism. It is part of what forced the U.S. ruling class to give white power a black face in Barack Hussein Obama.
It is clear that the U.S. will intensify its efforts to derail the Bolivarian Revolution in the face of Chavez’ illness, but ultimately it is imperialism that is weak, doomed and dying while the power of the people is rising.
The African People’s Socialist Party expresses our deepest unity and solidarity with President Chavez, the United Socialist Party and the people of Venezuela.
We understand that the masses of people in Venezuela are part of the rising tide of history that includes the African Revolution to unite and liberate Africa and African people everywhere.
We also understand that through history, blood and common revolutionary aspirations, the African Revolution is also an integral part of the revolution of the Americas.
Imperialism is in deep crisis. It tries to crush our leaders and our movements, but it will never crush the will of the people to be free.
It is inevitable that the colonized of the Earth will liberate ourselves from the brutal hands of U.S. imperialism.
Que viva Hugo Chavez!
Long live the African Revolution and struggle for national liberation around the world!
Down with U.S. imperialism!
