Bringing The Venezuelan Revolution Closer To Home
As part of their efforts to raise public awareness about the Bolivarian Revolution and its humanitarian advancements, the Hands Off Venezuela (HOV) campaign recently organised two well-attended meetings in Belfast and Dublin. Carlos Fiorillo, a member of the Untied Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and Jorge Martin, international secretary of HOV, were the guest speakers at the gatherings.
Éirígí’s Pádraig Ó Meiscill took the opportunity to interview Fiorillo and Martin on recent developments in Venezuela, the imperialist threat against it and the inspiration the people of Latin America provide for the struggle in Ireland.
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Carlos Fiorill (C F) - Pádraig Ó Meiscill (P Ó M)
P Ó M: Firstly, can you give us a brief rundown on the current situation in Venezuela?
C F: Things are going very well. There is going to be a referendum in December to ratify certain changes to the constitution, which will facilitate the transformation from a capitalist to a socialist state. That’s what people want, it’s what they voted for at the last election (In December 2006 Hugo Chavez won a resounding victory at the ballot box against his right-wing opponent Manuel Rosales). This will be participated in by the poor, by all the citizens of Venezuela. In general, the situation is very good.
P Ó M: What are the Five Engines for Socialism?
C F: The Five Engines for Socialism date from a speech that Hugo Chavez made after the presidential election last year and propose changes to the constitution to give more power to the people, more powers to the president and aim for the creation of communal power in Venezuela. The people who join the revolution in this context are going to work with the president for the welfare of the citizens in education, in healthcare and in social welfare.
P Ó M: The newly-formed United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has now been placed firmly at the forefront of the revolutionary movement. Where do its roots lie?
C F: The PSUV came from Ho Chi Minh’s analysis that we must unite all our forces. We must untie all the parties who support Chavez – if we pull together then we are stronger. That’s why the decision was taken to create one party, to be stronger than ever with the participation of all the population.
In terms of membership – at the beginning there were around two million people and, now, there are more than five million people who have joined the party. They are working together in each county, in each corner of Venezuela for the benefit of the people of Venezuela.
P Ó M: The recently released film No Volveran, an excellent documentation of Venezuela’s process of socialist transformation, paid a lot of attention to the growth in civic pride and initiative in working class communities and factories. Do you think these values can be sustained in the long-term, or even accelerated?
C F: Yes, most definitely. The mass of workers in the current population is the most important thing to the party, because they are the majority. The working class and the students are the pillar of the party.
P Ó M: The right-wing opposition have been very active in recent years in trying to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution. Have they lost momentum or are they still plotting to overthrow the new democracy?
C F: They are losing every day – their last chance was in December (2006) with Rosales and the fact that Chavez received 63 per cent of the vote shows they were well defeated. The opposition now is very, very weak. In the presidential elections Chavez won in every single one of the states of the 22 states the country is divided into, so it’s really conclusive. That was important because at one stage Rosales, who is the governor in the state of Zulia was very supportive of the coup d’état (against the Chavez government in 2002). The fact that in the last election Chavez won in Zulia was massively important as there was even talk about trying to separate Zulia, which is a wealthy oil producing region, from Venezuela.
Most of the opposition parties have left the country – many of them are in Miami in the USA or Bogota in Colombia. There is still some pressure from the media, there are still some newspapers and TV channels who employ pressure every day but, at the end of the day, they are not going anywhere.
P Ó M: A lot of activists involved in the social movements which catapulted Hugo Chavez to power believe that the traditional parliamentary structures are an obstacle, rather than a vehicle, to effecting radical change in Venezuelan society. Is it a goal of the Revolution to replace the essentially bourgeois, and European, parliamentary structures with ones that are more responsive to the needs of working people?
C F: One of the main priorities of the Chavez structures since he was elected in 1998 was to be responsive to the needs of the poor because, before that, the poor and working class people were forgotten. The other governments simply focused on the rich and their demands. There was no healthcare, there was starvation and widespread unemployment.
But, since 1998, Chavez has focused on the poor and the need for education, healthcare, work and training. Unbelievable amounts of people didn’t know how to read or write – now that problem has been virtually eliminated.
One of the points of the Five Engines, which is decisive, is the explosion of communal power. The idea of this is to transfer power from the existing institutions, many of which come from the old regime, into the communities themselves and the communities should link themselves up to a regional and national level. The communal councils have already been running for nearly one year and there are thousands of them around the country in organised communities, neighbourhoods, villages – wherever there are 200-300 families they get together in a big assembly, they elect their own spokespersons and they decide how to use the projects for public works or different activities in that one particular area. But that’s the idea, to do away with what is called representative, bourgeois democracy and go to a proletarian democracy whereby the people directly take decisions. These bodies will be included in the reform of the constitution, they have the support of the government in the interests of communal power.
P Ó M: The imperialist regime in the United States has remained consistently hostile to the Bolivarian Revolution and its leadership. Can the people of Venezuela successfully withstand this hostility in the long-term?
C F: This is why Chavez is building what is called the reserve – all the people will be in arms in the reserve alongside the regular army. We are preparing the people for any intervention or invasion by the United States – or any other country.
P Ó M: People from all over Latin America, most notably Bolivia, have taken massive inspiration from developments in Venezuela. Do you think the time is now right for the successful prosecution of an America-wide struggle against exploitation and for social justice?
C F: What happened in Venezuela was an inspiration for Bolivia definitely and I hope it was an inspiration to the world. Some people are now saying that people from other countries like Argentina can take inspiration from there in the near future.
Also in Ecuador for instance – the president Rafeal Correa has openly spoken of Venezuela as a model for the idea of socialism in the 21st century. The three countries who have been brought closer together by this process and movement are Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador – obviously Cuba as well, but Cuba already had its revolution a long time ago, but it’s also part of the same movement.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with Bolivian President Evo Morales
Both Bolivia and Ecuador are following Venezuela in writing a new constitution by going to the people and formally, democratically agreeing on a new constitution that cuts the ground from under the old order and changes the rules in favour of the grassroots support of the revolution. This was one of the first things Chavez did in Venezuela when the country adopted the new title of the Bolivarian Republic to mobilise the people.
In Ecuador, the new president proposed a referendum for a new constitutional assembly and his proposal was supported by 80 per cent of voters. In the new constitutional assembly he got more than 63 per cent of deputies to support him. This was around two weeks ago and now this constitutional assembly is going to draft a new constitution. Basically, the old parties have been mostly wiped out. The main party of the right-wing, which is the party of Alvaro Noboa the main businessman in the country who owns most of the banana plantations and so on, only got about 10 per cent of the vote and came third. So there is a big movement against all traditional structures and forms of bourgeois democracy. People now have a reason to vote – people are coming out to vote who never voted before and never saw the point in going out to vote.
P Ó M: Communities in Ireland are now fighting battles which proved to be the crux for the recent radical changes in Latin America. For example, in the Six Counties there is the struggle against water privatisation, while in the Twenty-Six Counties there is a battle ongoing to reclaim control of our natural gas. What lessons can we learn from Venezuela and elsewhere?
C F: I hope it can be an inspiration for you as well as the Latin American countries. You should organise and do something about it because these resources belong to you – to take back, to do whatever you please with them, it’s up to you to decide. People need to organise, to protest and you have to make a stand. Go anywhere – the streets or universities, organise people.
Social movements are more powerful than political parties because a social movement can attract more people. They unite people – workers, students, community workers. If these sectors untie together they can be far stronger than any political party, especially if the political parties are for the rich. Because the rich will always stop at a certain limit, but the poor, the working class are always the majority in any country and more people is more power.
Jorge Martin (J M) - Pádraig Ó Meiscill (P Ó M)
P Ó M: Can you tell us about the origins of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign?
J M: HOV was established in 2002 after the military coup in Venezuela. The main problem that led us to start the campaign was the lack of any truthful information in the media outside Venezuela about what was really happening there.
For example, we went there at the time of the boss’ lockout in December 2002 when the capitalists tried to sabotage the economy, particularly the oil industry, in order to bring down the government. This was being described in the capitalist media in Europe and elsewhere as a workers’ strike against an unpopular, anti-working class government and it was precisely the opposite. The newspapers really went to some lengths to spread direct lies about what was happening – whenever I was first flying to Venezuela I was reading the paper and they said that because of the ‘general strike’ all flights into Caracas international airport had been cancelled. We were flying over the Atlantic at the time so I got really worried but then we landed at Caracas airport and everything was working normally, international flights were landing and we took a bus to Caracas – everything was working normally.
There was a boss’ lockout but it was nothing like it was being reported. So it was at that time that the campaign was set up on the basis of solidarity with the Venezuelan Revolution, to counter the lies in the media and to build direct links between people in Europe and there – organise speaking tours and so on.
A campaign that started from very small beginnings is now present in more than 35 countries around the world and we’ve had some important successes – we got the British Trade Union Congress to pass resolutions three years running in support of the Venezuelan Revolution and the government, the decision not to renew the television licence for RCTV, which is a station that participated in the coup, was another success. That’s how it began – mainly around the issue of the media, and the disinformation. Now there is more information in general, more people know about the situation in Venezuela. The media is still lying but it’s not as bad as it was three or four years ago.
P Ó M: What are HOV’s aims and objectives?
J M: The three aims of the campaign are:
Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution and all its achievements, particularly in the fields of healthcare, education, land reform etc.
Opposition to any imperialist intervention in Venezuela, because we know the US government has been heavily involved in backing, financing and organising the coup attempts against Chavez. But also in the case of the British government, there were some statements against Chavez and backing the coup in 2002.
We also try to get truthful information across to counter the lies of the media. Part of the campaign is called Media Watch; we try to answer basic lies in the media because this is a concerted campaign. You see one particular lie and it’s not just one particular newspaper – this is repeated around the world. They follow a model. We try to counter these lies and provide alternative points of view. Obviously, we know that the media is dominated by big companies, but if they know that what they say is being watched – that there’s going to be letters written, there’s going to be complaints made about a lack of professionalism in their journalism and so on, they’ll probably be a bit more careful about what they say. And the other is by just going directly to people – organising meetings, showing documentaries in trades unions, community centres, schools, universities.
P Ó M: Is HOV a mainly European based campaign or is it active further a field?
J M: The campaign is active around the world. It’s active in most European countries, but it’s also active in Africa, where there’s activists in Nigeria, in Morocco, in South Africa. The interest in the Venezuelan Revolution is very widespread throughout the world. In Latin America itself the campaign is active in Peru, in Argentina, Central America, in Mexico.
There is also a lot of interest in the Untied States and Canada. Particularly from ordinary people, trade unionists and the black communities – there’s been many delegations from the United States and Canada. And it’s very good that Chavez himself has made a clear distinction, that they are against the imperialist policies of the US administration but they are making an appeal to ordinary people in the United States. In fact, when Chavez went to the United States he was asked about his policies and he said ‘well if my policies were put to the test of the US electorate most people would probably be in favour. Things like free education, free healthcare for all. If I were to stand against George Bush I would probably win – if they weren’t rigged!’
This is what we are finding – we have organised two or three speaking tours in the United States, bringing Venezuelan activists and there’s been big audiences and a lot of interest.
At the time of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans the first country to go in with help was not actually the US administration but Venezuela because the Venezuela oil company has a refinery just next to New Orleans. They opened the refinery for people to take shelter and they also sent their engineers and technicians into the cities to try to help.
All these things are a way of showing on the part of the Venezuelan government, on the part of the Bolivarian movement that they’re not against the ordinary people of the Untied States, it’s not an anti-American movement – it’s a movement against imperialism.
The Hands Off Venezuela campaign
P Ó M: From an international perspective, what are the biggest threats to the advances the Venezuelan people have made in recent years?
J M: The counter-revolution has been defeated on three or four major occasions when they tried to overthrow the government and put an end to the Revolution. So they are not as strong as they were before and they don’t have the initiative at this particular time – that doesn’t mean they are not dangerous, because some of the things they are discussing are things like the possibility of a political assassination of Chavez.
There is still the big threat of the media in Venezuela and internationally creating an unfavourable mood amongst public opinion. They repeat all sorts of lies – there are terrorist groups training in Venezuela, Venezuela is not cooperating with the war against drugs, there is child trafficking in Venezuela – all sorts of things they can make up to try to create a bad image.
Diplomatic pressure is also used – putting pressure on different countries to vote for resolutions against Venezuela at the Organisation of American States and so on. Now, also, they are resorting to economic sabotage, trying to create artificial scarcity of basic food products like flour, cooking oil, beans, rice, coffee, sugar, meat in order to create a situation of chaos in Venezuela in which people might turn against the government, against the Revolution.
But, basically, all these different tactics combined when the Venezuelan opposition parties participated in the elections in December 2006 – it doesn’t mean they have become democrats – that was the means they just had to use at that time because they don’t have the necessary points of support to organise a military coup, but as soon as they have these points of support they will try again, they will try any means. The biggest threat in my opinion is that if you leave a revolution half way, if you don’t complete a revolution. These measures that are being proposed now like establishing communal power, the factory councils that are also now being proposed in the new constitutional reform, unless all these things are completed and solidified the Revolution’s still in danger of being reversed.
If there is a counter-revolution in Venezuela it will not be a nice democratic counter-revolution. It will be like in Chile or in Argentina in the 1970s. This has been shown, I mean, the two-three days they were in power (after the 2002 right-wing coup) they suppressed all democratic rights, all democratic institutions, they had lists of people, they arrested the main leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution and if it had lasted for a week they would have started killing the main activists. So it’s quite dangerous and it’s still very important to build solidarity.
P Ó M: Is military intervention by the USA a realistic prospect?
J M: In my opinion, if it wasn’t for the war in Iraq they would have already attempted military intervention. But the United States is the most powerful imperialist power there has been for a very long time and they have no counter balance now, but at the same time they are involved in this war that they cannot win in Iraq. Their forces are already overstretched – they have something like 220,000 soldiers there – and Chavez himself has said if they attempt a military invasion of Venezuela the day after there will be no US embassy left standing in the whole of Latin America. There will be revolts throughout the continent. Because now they are very aware throughout Latin America and beyond, so it would be very difficult, it doesn’t mean the US isn’t going to try, but it would be very, very difficult.
The measures that Chavez is proposing are the same measures that were proposed to defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba (in 1961) – that is, arming the people through the reserve force of the army, through territorial guards and, as Chavez said, the best guarantee against imperialist intervention is people in arms.
They might also try to create provocations on the border with Colombia; the Colombian paramilitaries are already active in Venezuela. And there’s always the argument that Venezuela supports the FARC guerrillas in Colombia, which is not true, in fact, Venezuela has offered itself to mediate, to try to sort out the situation in Colombia. But this is in order to create a situation in which provocations on the border and so on can create a situation where, under the banner of the United Nations, humanitarian intervention or whatever, there will be foreign troops sent to Venezuela.
But I would say the balance of forces at this particular time is still very much in favour of the Revolution. If the US cannot maintain and solidify its occupation of Iraq where they overthrew an unpopular dictator, how can they do a similar thing in Venezuela where there is a revolutionary people, a revolutionary president with mass support?
P Ó M: How can people in Ireland best support their brothers and sisters in Venezuela?
J M: The most important thing is get to know what is happening in Venezuela and learn from what is happening there. Broaden the discussion, bring the discussion about the Venezuelan Revolution to as many people as possible, because if people are informed then it will become more difficult for the media to spread their lies and for imperialism to gain the upper hand.
Secondly, you need to do this in an organised way so everybody who agrees with the basic principles can get organised and try to spread solidarity with Venezuela. Two important fields of work are, one, the trades unions – try to get the information about Venezuela into local branches and try to get these local branches to pass resolutions in favour of the Revolution. The second field is the universities where there will be a lot of interest.
The other thing is what Chavez said at the World Youth Festival and the World Social Forum in Caracas – he said the Venezuelan Revolution is not only about Venezuela, it’s about you building the conditions for revolutionary change in your own country. Revolutionary change meaning achieving things like control over your natural resources, free education, free healthcare, rolling back privatisation – basically putting the economy and the resources of the country in the hands of ordinary people for the benefit of the majority of the people.
The Venezuelan Revolution can only be successful in the long-term if revolution spreads to other countries, not only in Latin America, but also in Ireland and other advanced capitalist countries.
P Ó M: Many thanks comrades. Hopefully Ireland will soon see the building of a mass movement against imperialism and capitalism that the people of Venezuela will be proud to call their sister organisation in struggle. Tiocfaidh ár lá agus Venceremos.