https://socialistaction.org/2017/07/31/u-s-hands-off-venezuela-2/
U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!
/ 17 hours ago
Aug. 2017 Venezuela
People in a neighborhood of Caracas, July 25, cheer a candidate for the
National Constituent Assembly. Ariana Cubillos / AP
On July 30, Venezuela elected a new 545-member National Constituent
Assembly, which takes on the task of rewriting the country’s 1999
constitution. The National Electoral Council said that 41.5 percent of
the electorate took part in the vote. That represents over 8 million
people, a vote exceeding any previous vote for the Maduro government.
Bourgeois opposition parties, which control the sitting National
Assembly—now to be displaced under the provisions of Venezuela’s current
constitution—called for a boycott of the election and put up no
candidates of their own. Opposition groups have worked to sabotage the
economy, while staging violent skirmishes against government facilities,
including police and military barracks. An attempted coup against the
government, even a murderous military action such as the one led by Gen.
Pinochet in Chile in 1973, is not out of the question.
The Trump administration condemned the vote and blasted President
Nicolás Maduro as “a dictator,” although Trump is happy to rub shoulders
with real dictators and authoritarian leaders of countries that are
allied to the United States. The next day, Washington froze Venezuelan
assets in the U.S. and banned travel and commerce by U.S. citizens to
the country. The White House indicated that further economic sanctions
against Venezuela would follow.
Socialist Action joins those who are demanding, “U.S. Hands off
Venezuela!” We stand opposed to all imperialist sanctions and travel
bans, and we call for an end to Washington’s overt and covert support to
the right-wing groupings that are working to create chaos in Venezuela
and bring down the government. We note that the United States has a
compelling interest in gaining lucrative concessions in the Venezuelan
oil fields and ultimately in re-privatizing the entire oil industry.
How can Venezuela escape its economic and political crisis? For the
country’s working people, the decisive road forward lies in socialist
revolution—taking the course first charted by Russia 100 years ago and
Cuba in 1959. This is the only way that the interests and aspirations of
the country’s working class and poor peasants can be fulfilled.
An essential step in this process is the construction of a mass
revolutionary socialist party, rooted in the struggles of the Venezuelan
workers. The central task of such a party would be to organize and
mobilize Venezuela’s working masses with the aim of placing a
revolutionary government in power that can abolish the capitalist state
and replace it with a workers’ state.
Such a party must be independent of the Maduro government, which has
sought to carry out an impossible balancing act between capitalist
interests and the needs of the people. It must likewise be independent
of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which has
shown itself to be under the sway of privileged bureaucrats and the
“boli-bourgeoisie”—millionaires disguised as “Chavistas.”
The Maduro/PSUV government has proven itself clumsily unresponsive to
the burning needs of the Venezuelan people, and has even committed
injustices against them. But it is the job of the Venezuelan people
alone to replace that government—without intervention by U.S.
imperialism. The international working-class movement must close ranks
against the attempts of the United States, working with its right-wing
proxies inside Venezuela, to disrupt the country’s economy and overthrow
the government.
UNAC’S statement on Venezuela
Below, we reprint the statement of the United National Antiwar Committee
(UNAC) and the newly formed Black Alliance for Peace on the crisis in
Venezuela.
The United States has been conducting a brutal, 20-year-long campaign
of destabilization against Venezuela in an attempt to cause “regime
change” in that country. This has taken the form of economic sabotage
and financial manipulation as well as support for the mobilization of
right-wing forces in increasingly violent demonstrations.
This is not a recent policy, but one that has also been carried out
under the Obama and Bush administrations as well as the present Trump
administration. In 2002, right-wing forces inside Venezuela attempted a
coup against then-President Hugo Chavez. Many sources have confirmed
that the U.S. gave the go-ahead to the opposition to orchestrate the
coup and promised support. Soon after the coup, the people of Venezuela
turned out in the streets in massive numbers and restored Chavez to the
presidency.
Barack Obama continued the assault on the Venezuelan revolution by
imposing crippling sanctions and asserting that Venezuela was a
“security threat” to the United States. These attacks from the U.S.
exemplify attempts to realize full-spectrum dominance, the epitome of
imperialist intervention which has brought so much suffering to the world.
Some of the very same opposition leaders who were involved in the 2002
coup attempt are today behind the present unrest, which has seen
well-financed opposition forces leading violent protests against the
government of Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. corporate media has reported on
these actions, but has blamed the violence on the Venezuelan government
and has not reported the huge mobilizations in defense of the Maduro
government.
Now a bipartisan bill has been submitted in the Senate (S.1018) with the
intention of further destabilizing Venezuela. For more information on
this bill and some actions you can take to oppose it, please go here:
http://afgj.org/take-action-today-to-support-venezuelas-democracy.
The economic crises in Venezuela is severe. The Venezuelan economy is
dependent on its large oil resources. The oil has been nationalized
since 1976, but there has been a continual push from U.S. interests as
well as wealthy Venezuelans to privatize it. Though the oil remains
nationalized, the refining, transportation and markets are all private
and have been used to undercut the ability of the oil industry to
support the economy. Additionally, in the past few years, with the
encouragement of Wall Street, oil production around the world has been
kept high, driving down the price, which hurts oil-dependent economies,
including those of countries that the U.S. opposes, such as Russia and
Iran in addition to Venezuela.
The U.S. media also has been full of stories of Venezuelan supermarkets
with near-empty shelves and long lines of people seeking basic
necessities. What hasn’t been reported is that the privately owned food
corporations are deliberately hoarding supplies intended for
working-class neighborhoods, while making sure that food and other goods
are readily available in the wealthier areas.
The Bolivarian Revolution has always endeavored to be an ally of the
people of United States and to extend a hand of friendship and
solidarity. When the U.S. government turned its back on the people of
the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Venezuelan
government offered humanitarian aid, but was rebuffed. Venezuela
provided fuel assistance to low-income Black and Brown people when the
U.S. government would not.
These acts reinforced the strong support that many in the Black
community had for the process in Venezuela and deepened the commitment
of Black activists to stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela
and their process. This support is in line with the long-standing Black
radical tradition of defending nations under imperialist attack by the
U.S. government.
The defeat of the Bolivarian Revolution at the hands of U.S. imperialism
and its reactionary right-wing allies in Venezuela would be a defeat for
progressive forces all over the world and a disaster for the people of
Venezuela and its people, as it has been in Libya and Ukraine and Haiti
and every nation which has lost its sovereignty to the two-party
commitment to imperialist intervention.
UNAC and the Black Alliance for Peace demand:
End U.S. interference in the affairs of Venezuela!
Self-determination for the Venezuelan people!
End the sanctions and economic warfare now!
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July 31, 2017 in Caribbean, Latin America.
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