Since Chavez came to power in 1998, his leadership made Venezuela one of the key centres of national liberation struggles in the world. Over 16 years later, his policies succeeded in shaping a new vision of Venezuela and of what is referred to as “Latin America.”
One of the first things Hugo Chavez and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela did was to take back control of the Venezuela’s oil resource, upon which the entire economy of Venezuela depends.
All statistics converge on the rapid improvement in the lives of the most trodden people of Venezuela as shown by Carles Muntaner, Professor of Nursing:
“During the last 10 years of Chavez’s rule, the government increased spending by 60.6 percent (a total of $772 billion).”
When you compare the 2015 Venezuela budget of $117 billion that catered for 29 million people to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s 2015 budget of $9 billion, that catered for 70 million people, you begin to grasp the reality of consequences of Chavez leadership in leading the struggle of the people of Venezuela to recapture their resources from U.S. imperialism and their puppets in the country.
Carles Muntaner states further that Chavez’s government has eradicated illiteracy in Venezuela making Venezuela “the 3rd highest literacy population in the region. There is tuition-free education from day-care to university level.
Seventy-two percent of children attend public day cares and 85% school age children attend school. There are 1000’s of new and refurbished schools including 10 new universities.”
Compared to Joseph Kabila’s government which keeps up to 75 percent of children out of schools, despite the immense resources of DR Congo.
The Constituent Assembly versus the National Assembly
Since the opposition gained control of the National Assembly in December 2015, their sense of entitlement to exercise power grew exponentially, so is the support and belief from the U.S. for a regime change in Venezuela.
Three things made it possible for the opposition to take control of the Parliament. The high rate of abstention of the Venezuela toiling masses, the sharp drop in oil revenues shook the economy of Venezuela, and Venezuela’s settler bourgeoisie took this opportunity to engage in food shortage manipulations to discredit and destabilize the government.
The food shortage is not as exaggerated as the bourgeois media would want to you to believe, but it affects the Venezuelan working class and peasant classes. When one understands that 95 percent of Venezuelan media is privately owned and in the hands of the local bourgeoisie and the U.S.
The imperialist New York Times reminds us how the opposition took control of the parliament “When the opposition got the National Assembly they said there would be food, and now it’s even worse,” said Juan Carlos Hernández, 43, a government employee who said he supported Mr. Maduro.
The opposition is dominated by white settlers and neocolonialists who openly work for the U.S. ruling class. One sector of this settler bourgeoisie openly calls and works for a violent overthrow of Maduro’s government.
The high level of deaths, including of police officers are due to these U.S. puppets. They do not restrict themselves to electoral tactics; they are prepared to use all means to regain power.
They attack voting centres and military barracks, they carry out targeted assassinations of anti imperialist forces, terrorize people in working class areas, raid shops, in short they work to create a climate of insecurity to advance U.S. imperialist interests, and they know they have the support of the bias and silence of imperialist traditional media.
The call for a Constituent Assembly is Nicolas Maduro’s response to this reality. The National assembly elections were held on 30 July 2017. A constituent Assembly by definition has a short life span, and ends when its mission is completed.
This Constituent assembly would review the 1999 Hugo Chavez constitution and propose a new one in two years. They have the power to change institutions.
The opposition boycotted the Constituent Assembly elections and organized on July 16, 2017, a counter proposal consultation without the approval of the National Election Council, the body responsible for organizing elections.
Since the regional elections are due in December this year and the presidential elections are set for next year, there are many struggles in the days ahead
U.S. president Donald Trump has called Maduro a dictator despite the fact that there have been over 15 elections in Venezuela since the Chavistas came to power. You cannot compare that with Saudi Arabia, the friend of the U.S. in the Middle East.
In what is known today as CARACAZO in February 1989, a pro-U.S. government slaughtered over 500 demonstrators opposed to the price hike of transportation cost and other food of basic necessities.
This is not to say that there are no problems in Venezuela or that all things that have happened in recent years have been a success. This is far from ignoring the struggles that the Bolivarian government has been experiencing as the whole world has its eyes on Venezuela.
Chavez represented a ray of hope for the oppressed people around the world. Chavez’s access to power has undermined U.S. influence in Venezuela and in the region. He was able to politicize the army and win patriotic forces inside the army to support the Bolivar Revolution, making difficult for the U.S. to easily launch coup that will capture power for the benefice of U.S. and its Venezuela puppets.
It is clear that whatever the contradictions with the Chavistas leadership, the settler colonialists compradors and bureaucrats from Europe and elsewhere and their allies must be crushed to allow the Revolution to move forward.
The U.S. agenda in Venezuela is aggression and looting
The announce of a new round of U.S. sanctions against leading members of Maduro’s leadership was predictable in contrast to the U.S swift condemnation of Venezuela’s government, the countries of ALBA (Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Grenada and the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis.)
ALBA Secretary General David Choquehuanca expressed support for Venezuela in a statement to media outlet teleSUR, “Our people seek harmony, integration and here we have a declaration of total unconditional support for Venezuela’s democracy, it’s democratically-elected president and to the people who have been valiantly defending their rights and sovereignty.”
The U.S. bellicosity is exposed by the announce by Ricardo Menendez, the Venezuelan vice president, on August 11, 2017 of Chinese investments of 50 billion dollars in over 650 strategic projects. This followed the $14 billion of Russian investment to develop oil and gas production in 2014
Venezuela’s U.S.-funded far right settler colonialist are multiplying attacks on public buildings, police and army etc.
Experienced Colombian paramilitaries in counter-insurgency warfare are also acting in Venezuela.
This is a quick review of the history of U.S. aggression in South America, from the theft of half of Mexico in 1848, the overthrow in 1954 of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Allende in 1972 in Chile, the training and funding in the 80’s of death squads to destroy the revolution in Central America, the 2004’s overthrow of Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti and the failed coup to overthrow president Hugo Chavez in 2002, Obama’s coup against the democratically-elected government of Honduras, etc.
All these show that it is the U.S that is a strategic threat to all freedom and peace loving people of Central and South America.
We as African Internationalists condemn all maneuvres and policies of the U.S. government used to derail the struggle for self-determination of the people and government of Venezuela and we believe unequivocally that people of Venezuela have the uncompromising right to decide their own affairs.
We offer our unconditional solidarity to the struggle of the people Venezuela. The influence and power of the U.S. must be eradicated in Venezuela. The wounded U.S. imperialism and its settler allies in Venezuela are desperate to regain full control in Venezuela.
We support all efforts of the Venezuelan government to crush U.S. influence in Venezuela. There cannot be any doubt that the future of Venezuela is in revolution, the snatching by colonized workers in alliance with poor peasants of the pedestal upon which white imperialist power sits.
Strengthen and deepen the revolution in Venezuela!
Smashed the sell-out compradors and bureaucrats!
