Destabilization campaign continues in Venezuela

The Latin American Revolution (Part XXIII)
Destabilization campaign continues in Venezuela

Asad Ismi
June 1, 2014

Since February, continuing protests, many of them violent, against the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro have claimed more than 40 lives in Venezuela and injured more than 800 people. Most were victims of opposition supporters who have also set fire to universities, public buildings and bus stations – even the buses themselves have been burned. The scale of the protests has decreased since the start of April when the government and opposition leaders held talks to end the conflict. Much of the unrest had until then taken place in richer neighbourhoods, led by students attending private schools. But recently demonstrations have been restricted to opposition strongholds, such as Táchira state on the Colombian border. The protestors cite high inflation, and shortages of food and other goods as the source of their frustration. The latter is almost certainly the result of hording by opposition-owned and controlled distribution chains.

The demonstrations have been carried out by right wing political parties opposed to the Maduro government’s progressive program. Backing these parties, and several of the NGOs organizing protests, is the United States, which has been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government since 2002 – the year former President Hugo Chavez, now deceased, was briefly removed in a CIA-orchestrated military coup. Since 1998, Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution has significantly redistributed wealth from the rich to the poor majority in Venezuela, bringing them free medical care and education, as well as subsidized food and housing, land reform and grassroots participatory democracy in the form of communal councils.

On the continental level, Chavez was the most prominent leader of the Latin American Revolution, or Pink Tide, which integrated and united left-leaning countries economically and politically, and substantially weakened U.S. influence in the region. For example, the former Venezuelan leader helped create several new Pan-American political, economic and development agencies, including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), Bank of the South (Banco del sur), Telesur (Television network of the South) and PetroSur, a co-operative energy venture between several Latin American states. The idea behind all of these is to develop an entirely new socialist-oriented continental economy, one that does not function according to capitalist market rules but rather responds to the development needs of the Latin American people.

Such revolutionary domestic and regional policies have incurred the wrath of Washington and the Venezuelan elite, which has lost 18 out of 19 elections since the very popular Chavez first took office. The Venezuelan electoral process under Chavez and Maduro has been called “the best in the world” by ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter after observing the 2013 presidential elections. Chavez’s death that year transferred his popularity to Maduro, his chosen successor, who continues to win elections, compelling the opposition to resort once again to widespread violence to try to overthrow the government. At stake for the U.S. is control of Venezuela’s enormous mineral wealth. The country is estimated to have the world’s largest oil reserves.

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