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Commentary :: International Relations

Venezuela represents hope

On April 11-17, events around the world will develop solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution. The week of solidarity will mark the third anniversary of the defeat of a US-backed coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose government is leading a process is implementing wide-ranging changes to eradicate poverty and build up institutions of popular power. In Australia, solidarity events are being organised by the Venezuela Solidarity Network.
One of the groups most involved in the network is the socialist youth organisation Resistance, which has made solidarity with Venezuela a central part of its campaigning. Green Left Weekly's Stuart Munckton spoke to Fred Fuentes, one of the Resistance members involved in VSN, about why the socialist organisation believes solidarity with Venezuela is so important.

“The Venezuelan revolution is in the forefront of the struggle to defeat the system of war and misery”, Fuentes argued. “At a time when most of the world’s population, who live in the Third World, are getting poorer — as their governments implement biting neoliberal policies at the behest of First World corporations and governments; at a time when this economic imperialism is enforced by the US over the barrel of hundreds of thousands of guns — in this situation, the Venezuelan people are showing that you can resist.

“Over the last few years, Resistance members watching Venezuelan politics began to realise that, through mass struggle, poor workers and peasants are making huge gains. Chavez’s government has implemented so many policies that directly attack the interests of the corporations — the imperialists exploiting the country, and the local elite who collaborate with them — in favour of the poor majority. These include massive free education and free health care reforms and land reform. One of the most significant reforms has been in the oil industry, where the government has taken control away from a small group of pro-corporate managers. Now, the massive oil profits are funding many of the other reform programs.

“But even more importantly, we began to realise that these these reforms were not simply being handed down from the government, but were gains won and defended by the poor majority. The defeat of the coup three years ago, the defeat of an organised lock-out by the oil industry bosses — these were carried out by mass mobilisation, not by acts of parliament. Chavez’s government is encouraging the development of mass organisations that can carry out change themselves. The latest example of this is Chavez’s attempts to massively expand the reserve army to include a tenth of the population, and to organise armed militias to repel an imperialist attack.

“That’s why we think that this is such a special situation — there is a revolution being carried out where real power is being increasingly taken by the majority, when in most societies, including our own, it is held by a small corporate elite. As a socialist organisation, a mass struggle to create a democratic system that serves people not corporations requires our support and solidarity.”

Fuentes added, however, “Of course, we don’t think everything in Venezuela is perfect, and there is much detail that we don’t know. There are some battles that revolutionaries are carrying out that we know about — against corrupt, bureaucratic and top-down ways of working, for example. But Resistance has never thought that we should wait for a perfect revolution or struggle before organising solidarity.

“We can’t offer a guarantee that the Venezuelan majority’s struggle to determine their own future will be successful, but we do know that it is more likely to be if we can organise solidarity.”

Fuentes also pointed out that solidarity helped struggles here. “Whenever there is a movement for people's power anywhere in the world, all of us can take inspiration from it. But that its not enough — we have to be a part of it, even in our own countries.

“Our task is to build our own movement of people's power. Letting people know about what is happening in Venezuela is an important part of that right now, because Venezuela represents hope. The biggest problem for the left in Australia, as in most Western countries, is no-one has much hope that you can change things for the better, that imperialism can be challenged. Venezuela shows that you can win change.”

Fuentes commented that “We know that solidarity movements can strengthen progressive forces globally. Resistance was formed out of the campaign in solidarity with the Vietnamese people against the US war machine.”

Fuentes explained what led to the formation of the VSN last year, saying: “There were a number of different groups around the country, Resistance being one, who were either directly doing work in solidarity with Venezuela or else Latin America more generally — for example, Chilean and El Salvadoran solidarity groups have come onboard the VSN. But all these groups recognised the importance of the events unfolding in Venezuela, so rather than have everyone off by themselves doing their own things we wanted to set up network to coordinate this work.”

To illustrate what can be done, Fuentes pointed to the VSN-organised solidarity brigade to Venezuela in July-August. Around 40 people have already registered to participate, including some from other countries. According to Fuentes, this is the first brigade of its kind in the world to visit Venezuela. “This is a great way for people to experience people's power first hand, but also a common project to get all interested groups to work around — not just to publicise the brigade but to use those who went on the brigade once they get back to speak to as many different groups as possible.”

Explaining that Australian activities in the week of solidarity consisted not just of film screenings and brigade information meetings, but pickets and protests, Fuentes argued: “in the context of escalating pressure and a war of words from Washington against Venezuela — we want to get as many voices from the Australian community, regardless of what they think of Chavez or the policies of his government, to insist that the US respect Venezuela's right to determine its own government and its own course. We also want to ask our government to make it clear that they will support Venezuelan sovereignty and not any attack on that sovereignty that might come from the US.”

Fuentes told GLW that Resistance was following events in Venezuela closely, and was particularly inspired by the recent moves to deepen the revolution — the experiments in workers' co-management of state companies, the nationalisation of a company that tried to sack its workforce and confrontations with private interests who have left large amounts of land idle, while many peasants struggle with little or no land.

He added that there was even a positive side to the problems and contradictions of the revolutionary movement, because they were “are out in the public, in the public discussion and the positive thing is the central figure in the process, Hugo Chavez, seems very clear on what the direction the process needs to take, on the importance of deepening popular power.”

Fuentes finished by appealing to everyone who wants to help build Venezuelan solidarity to take the initiative. “Check out the website . We want to get the message that there is hope in this world out as far and wide as we can.”
 
 

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