Abby Martin is reporting on her visit to Venezuela on 2 podcasts and
probably on her The Empire Report. She indicates that most demonstrations
have been peaceful. But the opposition is setting up flaming barricades from
which government supporters are attacked. Some are burned alive. When the
government responds, the corporate media shows only the government responses
and describes them as government repression. She also says that the
opposition has attacked and destroyed public buildings and services such as
clinics and schools. She and her fellow reporter have been targeted by the
press which supports the opposition and have received death threats.
Miriam
Venezuela Resists U.S. Sabotage
Screenshot 2017-06-10 at 10.54.29 AM
By Berta Joubert-Ceci, www.workers.org
June 10th, 2017
Never before has the Venezuelan Bolivarian process faced such a dangerous
threat as it does today. This is true even though U.S. imperialism and its
collaborators in Venezuela have imposed a continuous siege on the country
ever since Hugo Chávez became president in 1999. Their hostile actions
included a coup détat, which was quickly defeated, and sabotage of
Venezuelas nationalized oil company.
Now that campaign has intensified and includes the possibility of direct
military intervention to achieve their goal of regime change. For the last
two months those opposing the revolutionary process, led mainly by the
so-called Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), have committed violent actions
daily.
Fascist acts of terror
These criminal acts have been directed with surgical accuracy against people
identified as pro-Chavista. The reactionaries have targeted state
establishments, too. The criminals have burned or destroyed everything
from entire fleets of public buses and offices of the government party, the
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), to maternity and childrens
hospitals. They recently burned down Chávezs childhood home.
These terrorists have already killed about 60 people. Their cruelty is
unimaginable, as is their terrible racist character.
After identifying a young Afro-Venezuelan as a Chavista, the criminals set
him on fire, chased him and then stabbed him. When some women from the
wealthy sector of Altamira in Caracas saw an Indigenous woman, a well-known
artist, they shouted at her, insulted her, and kicked and hit her with flag
poles.
Paid criminal gangs and Colombian paramilitaries are also involved in these
terrorist acts. The Venezuelan government denounced the use of children in
these attacks to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF).(Diario
Octubre, May 25)
It is important to emphasize that although the corporate media present these
terrorist acts as chaos at the national level, they are generally limited to
the areas where the mayors or governors office is in the reactionary
oppositions hands. In the neighborhoods where poor people live, they are
not joining in these acts of terror.
The attacks against the Bolivarian revolution have taken place not just
inside Venezuela, but the countrys embassies and consulates have been
targeted as well, including the consulate in New York City. Physical attacks
or insults have been leveled against Venezuelans and other people who are
seen as being in solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela, such as filmmaker
Oliver Stone.
Washingtons hostile plans
Through the Organization of American States and its president, Luis Almagro,
the U.S. has mounted an international campaign to impose the so-called OAS
Democratic Charter on Venezuela and to involve other countries in its
hostile plans.
This is particularly true regarding Colombia. A few days after Colombian
President Juan Manuel Santos met with U.S. President Donald Trump on May 18,
Santos ordered the army to deploy its armored tanks to the Venezuelan
border. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez immediately denounced
this provocation by the neighboring country.
Trumps meetings with key Venezuelan opposition figures have also exposed
U.S. assistance to these forces. He met with Julio Borges, opposition
president in Venezuelas National Assembly, and with Lilian Tintori, spouse
of Leopoldo López, currently imprisoned for inciting violent protests in
2014 that caused 43 deaths. Violence inside Venezuela increased
significantly after the meetings with Trump.
Corporate news reports, especially by CNNs Spanish network, blame President
Nicolás Maduro for the violence, calling it state repression. Faced with
this false news, Workers World/Mundo Obrero interviewed a leader of the
famous Neighborhood 23 de Enero (January 23), to gain a view of how
working-class communities are assessing the situation and acting.
The peoples voice
Juan Contreras is a member of the Simón Bolívar Coordinadora, a grass-roots
social organization that has supported the Bolivarian process for 18 years.
He was a deputy in the National Assembly. The January 23 Neighborhood is of
vital importance in the revolutionary historical process. The Cuartel de la
Montaña, where Commander Chávez is buried, is located there.
To put the current situation in context, Contreras told Workers World: What
happens today in Venezuela involves a counteroffensive that the Yankee
empire has been promoting. He listed the right-wing coups that overthrew
progressive governments in Paraguay and Honduras and the ouster of Brazils
former President Dilma Rousseff.
And what is still missing? he asked. The crown jewel, Venezuela. For more
than two decades, since Hugo Chávez became the bad example. Thanks to the
Bolivarian Process, these processes have spread to the Caribbean and Latin
America and been established in Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and El
Salvador. The Sandinistas returned in Nicaragua. Cuba remains the moral and
ethical beacon for our peoples.
The Bolivarian Process spread to our Latin America and Caribbean, and today
the U.S. empire wants to end all these processes.
Contreras emphatically declares the hostile forces in Venezuela to be
counterrevolutionaries, not just opponents. He compares the current
situation with what happened in Nicaragua with the counterrevolution
sponsored by the U.S. empire, which armed the contras at the border, and
sabotaged the work in the factories and the planting of the fields
[agriculture] from within the ministries.
Resistance to the attacks
[This] is financed by the empire. They just approved more than $500 million
for the counterrevolution, Contreras continued. Even though there is
scarcely half a year left until the general elections, they are determined
to demand elections now. What is now underway in Venezuela is a massive
subversive process, trying to wear people down, and aimed at the overthrow
of the Bolivarian process. But the people here are resisting the empires
attacks.
Contreras explained, [The contras] are using economic warfare, hiding food
and medicine. He also mentioned the media war that attempts to portray
Venezuela as a failed state, a narco-state, with an alleged humanitarian
crisis meant to justify foreign intervention. The empire believes this is
the moment for the final thrust because there is no Commander Chávez. But
President Maduro cannot be Commander Chávez. He must carry on with his own
leadership style.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a threat to the
U.S., noted Contreras. But its such nonsense to say that Venezuela is a
threat to the principal imperialist power of the world.
But the people here are still betting on this revolution, which has helped
the 80 percent excluded during the Fourth Republic [pre-1999] to have access
to health care and education, he stressed.
Maduro calls for a Constituent Assembly
President Maduro, aiming for peace, has called for a Constituent Assembly
in the framework of the failure of dialogue between the opposition and the
government. Contreras believes that during the dialogue the possibility of
reaching any agreement was zero because only the government and the
counterrevolutionaries were present. There was no direct participation of
the people, our workers, Indigenous people, peasants, students, people of
the neighborhoods. The shirtless, the toothless, the ones the bourgeoisie
does not want. They are the ones who were missing at the discussion table.
Thats why it was condemned to fail.
The Constituent Assembly is a great meeting of a national character where
peoples representatives dictate the guidelines that should mark the
coexistence between governed and governor. The popular sectors have the hope
of achieving peace through this Constituent Assembly.
But, Contreras warned, if that Constituent Assembly does not have the
presence of the people, it will be a complete failure. There can be no
favoritism; you cannot impose the individuals you want. The people who go
there must be those who have maintained this process for 18 years. Because
they are the ones who know what are the problems affecting the Bolivarian
process. Legality is one thing, but our people have the political knowledge.
That is why there should be a people-based Constituent Assembly. It has to
be the people [the poor] who design the path to follow.
Contreras also suggested that members of the Constituent Assembly must not
have held public office for at least two years.
The Constituent Assembly, Contreras pointed out, in seeking to include
measures not now in the Constitution, such as appropriate punishment of
perpetrators of terrorism, must also include punishment for those who commit
acts of corruption. He gives an example of those who after stealing from
the people, using the cheapest dollars granted by the government to import
essential products did not fulfill that obligation. They only brought part
of the products into the country and kept the rest of the money. They went
abroad to live and then returned to Venezuela without being punished.
How can the people be included in the Constituent Assembly?
This is a class struggle and my class is one of those at the bottom,
stressed Contreras. We must now allow the people to express themselves.
From below, we want a Constitution that protects the Revolution and allows
building on the theme of peace, not to where those fascist sectors want us
to go.
To include the people in the Constituent Assembly, Contreras explained, We
are holding assemblies across the country where the people discuss the
issues. Here in the 23rd de Enero we have already held two. The 23rd is
divided into organized sectors. In one sector we held a forum with a
constitutional lawyer to which 325 people came. This was under the difficult
conditions in which the country finds itself. There are 13 sectors in the
neighborhood (parish), and we will visit it sector by sector to hold debates
on the Constituent Assembly. Then we will hold a larger assembly where all
the sectors and all the organizations that are part of the 23rd come.
The life of the [revolutionary] process itself is at stake in this
Constituent Assembly. The possibility that an alternative model can be
developed in Latin America and the Caribbean is at stake.
These debates are taking place in the factories, in the fields, in the
universities. They are responding to President Maduros call for a
discussion.
In contrast with neoliberal models, where they bet on the individual, here
we bet on the construction of an alternative model with new values within
society, values of solidarity, and for moving forward to build a different
economic, social and political model.
I believe that this is the path that Comandante Chávez told us to build
the communal state as a transitional process for advancing Bolivarian
socialism.
