Venezuela is situated in Latin America and borders Colombia to the West, Brazil to the South and Guyana to the South East. It’s officially referred to as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and has a population of about 28 million. Caracas is the capital.
The country is facing intense attacks from the imperialist camp led by USA.
The reason the imperialists are determined to crush the Bolivarian revolution is because Venezuela is showing an alternative way of governance that helps the majority of its people and offers help to the oppressed countries. Imperialist countries know that if Venezuela is successful in consolidating socialism, many third world countries will be encouraged to follow its example. This would deny imperialists control over their resources which would otherwise would go towards their people’s benefit. It is for this reason that they are pouring millions of dollars in the global south in the name of promoting bourgeois democracy which then maintains the capitalist status quo which benefits them – the imperialists.
The imperialists also know that Africa has a younger population which seeks revolutionary changes in the continent. It is the mission of imperialism to keep the youth ignorant about Africa’s history and the real reasons for its poverty. Many young people are sponsored by USA to attend international conferences which are really meant to reinforce the message of capitalism. They are made to believe that it is due to inefficiency of the Africans that the continent is lagging and not of the capitalist system that allows imperialists to exploit the continent. This leads to ideological ignorance. It is therefore not surprising that many young people post messages that reflect their ignorance of the real geo-political situation in the world today. A case in point is the message on Facebook by the Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobi Wine claiming that he held a discussion with ‘President @jGuaido’ He posted this on twitter some weeks ago:
Very pleased to speak with President @jguaido of Venezuela this evening. We discussed the way forward for both countries, and the need to build synergies for the defence of democratic principles and human rights across the globe[1].
It is a sad reflection of the lack of political awareness among some in East Africa, including those aspiring to be presidents of their country. Even a quick check on pro-imperialist platform Wikipedia would have informed Bobby Wine that ‘Nicolás Maduro has been the president of Venezuela since 14 April 2013, after winning the presidential election after Chávez’s death, with 50.61% of the votes’.
It is in this context of political ignorance that we need to give solidarity to the Venezuelan government and its people whose right it is to decide their future free from imperialists who continue to prop up lackeys such as Juan Guaido. Our struggle is against the same imperialism that stifles people’s rights in East Africa and the rest of Africa. Our struggle for socialism and against capitalism and imperialism is the same that is being waged in Venezuela. We are, in essence, parts of the same anti-imperialist struggle. A victory to Venezuela is a victory for Kenya and East Africa!
Background History
Venezuela achieved independence from Spain on 5th May 1811 after a great struggle led by Simone Bolivar. The country ceded from Gran Colombia in 1830 and ushered in Páez as the first president of the new Venezuela. Oil, which today is the top export earner of the country accounting to 84.3% of the total export, was commercially discovered in the early 1910s. Vicente Gomez who was the president from the 1910s to the 1930s, steered the country in discovering new oil deposits and rewarding imperialists by granting oil concessions to their companies in exchange for a personal cut of the royalties. The oil somehow improved Venezuela’s economy and by the 1950s the country was one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries.
Most regimes that ruled the country from the 19th and 20th century were pro-imperialists – they helped the imperialists to siphon Venezuelan wealth to their country. As a result, oil booms such as the one experienced in 1973 did not help the common people. Most of it went to multinationals and the compradors. In the 1980s, due to corruption and neo liberal policies advocated by the subsequent governments under the stewardship of the imperialists, the economy slackened, making it difficult for people to access basic necessities. This aggravated the people who took to the streets, protesting their material conditions and demanding the resignation of their president. The government resorted to a brutal crackdown using its state machinery, killing hundreds of people. It is due to this that the pro-people military led by Hugo Chavez under the banner Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement-200 attempted to overthrow the then president Carlos Andres Perez on 4th February 1992. The popular insurrection did not succeed and Chavez was arrested after surrendering and imprisoned only to be released in 1994. His daring attempt to overthrow the corrupt regime endeared him to the masses and when he contested in the 1998 elections, he emerged victorious with a high percentage of votes. Upon taking power, Chavez realized that his country could not have democracy while its people were illiterate, unemployed and without food. His Government dedicated a large percentage of its budget to empowering, educating, nourishing, curing and employing the Venezuelan people. He struck a deal with Cuba which worked out an exchange of Cuban doctors’ services for Venezuelan oil. These doctors even today offer free medical services to millions of Venezuelans in rural areas. On top of that he came up with the concept of grocery stores where basic foods were subsidized by the government to the tune of up to 50%.
Chavez made sure that the bulk of the oil went to benefiting its citizens. To make this possible, the government in 2001 implemented Hydrocarbons Law that stipulated that any foreign oil investment had to be on a joint venture basis thus limiting foreign ownership to not more than 49%. The law also raised both royalties and taxes on the foreign companies. These laws among many other progressive policies made the imperialists furious with Chavez’s socialist reign and they began planning his downfall. They first started by inciting oil workers to go on strike in 2002. Together with some compradors that were beneficiaries of former regimes and assisted by few military personnel, they attempted to overthrow him. Their mission went as planned in the initial stages but the Venezuelan people, especially the working class, mobilised and held huge demonstrations demanding the reinstatement of their president and within days, Chavez was back in office. Chavez’s presidency witnessed numerous sabotage acts by imperialists and his opponents and the media too was used to demonise him. But the majority of Venezuelans stood by him and in all the elections that were held, Chavez emerged victor with over 50% of votes. In 2013 Chavez died after battling cancer for two years.
On 14th April 2014, the Venezuelan people elected Nicolás Maduro as their president who continued with Chavez’s policies and this infuriated the imperialists who were hoping Maduro would open the market and allow them to milk Venezuela as had been done before Chavez. The imperialists have continued to use their media (CNN, BBC, VOA etc.) to slander Maduro’s government. They have continued to fund NGOs in the name of fighting human rights in Venezuela while their real motive is to undermine the government. The support that the government is getting from its people has also not pleased them and they are trying by all means to persuade the masses to turn against Maduro. Imperialists know that masses rebel against their governments due to hardship and it is on this basis that they have imposed economic sanctions. Sanctions have really affected the country as it is unable to satisfy the need of Venezuelans, forcing millions of people to immigrate to neighboring countries in search of jobs. The sanctions were first issued by President Barack Obama in 2015 claiming Venezuela was a threat to USA national security. After taking power in 2017 to 2021, President Donald Trump continued to impose additional sanctions on Venezuela by ordering a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the United States and barring transactions with US citizens and companies. He also banned the refinancing of its debt and the repatriation of revenue from abroad. The other imperialist countries in Europe also joined the bandwagon and in July 2020 the Bank of England refused to release £800 million of gold bullion that Venezuela deposited there for safekeeping. The Venezuelan government had intended to use the gold to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
The sanctions, though bringing hardship, have not borne fruits as the Venezuelan people have stood with their president. The imperialists seem to be running out of ideas and have exposed themselves by now wildly claiming that Maduro together with his government officials are trafficking drugs to the USA. The USA has even indicted them and offered a $15m reward for information leading to their arrest and prosecution. Newly elected president (Biden) has promised to continue supporting sanctions, vowing to make them more effective. The sanctions are said to be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
In May 2018 Venezuela held presidential elections and Maduro won with 68 percent. The United States failed to respect the wishes of Venezuelan by condemning the election as unfair and anti-democratic and threatened stricter sanctions. The USA continued its pressure by sponsoring anti-government opponents in every way it could. It incited the defeated candidates into rejecting the results over allegations of irregularities, demanding the repeat of elections and the nullification of Maduro’s victory. The rejection did not deter Maduro from executing his constitutional duty and on 10th January 2019, he was inaugurated into office thus assuming his second presidential term. The imperialists together with their lackeys hatched a scheme to appoint Juan Guaidó as an interim president. Juan Guaidó by then was the president of the National Assembly, a role he assumed on 8th January 2019. With the backing of the imperialists, Guaido declared himself as interim president on 23rd January 2019 arguing that Article 233 of the constitution gave him power to assume presidency. According to the article, the National Assembly has the power to declare a national president in case the office is vacant – “abandonment of the office”. In that case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president until presidential elections are held. Guaido’s argument according to the constitution doesn’t make sense as President Maduro has never abandoned the presidency. The only time that the presidency was vacant and in which the said article could apply is when president Chavez passed on in which Maduro took over the presidency on an interim basis until he called for an election a few months later.
Since Juan Guaidó declared himself president, the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries officially recognised the 37-year-old opposition politician as the interim president of Venezuela. The USA has also pressured its lackey states in Latin America such as Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Peru, Haiti etc into recognizing Guaido. This does not mean that people of these countries share the same stand with their governments. Instead, the majority of them are with the Venezuelans. However, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua have refused to bow to the imperialists’ pressure and stood with the truth thus recognizing the Maduro government. Beyond the continent, China, Russia, Iran and Turkey have also been in solidarity with the people of Venezuela with their justly elected president, comrade Nicolas Maduro.
By Kimani Waweru
[1] He however deleted the message after people raised concern over the post
