
Dear friends from Latin America and the world, we welcome you from the communities, the streets, the countryside, the roads, the factories and, universities, the places not visited by those who have destroyed the dream of a democratic and popular revolution. We would like to have you in our communities to confront the reality, which is not the official one. We want to have a conversation with you about the following:
- LABOR
The material conditions of life of the working class: Those of us who live from our work have been surviving for almost a decade, with the lowest income in the world and the absolute loss of rights once conquered in the 20th century. The concept of wages has been destroyed while our children, siblings, parents, and relatives leave the country to avoid starvation. The opulent lifestyle and consumption of the ruling political elite contrast with the situation of those who live in the countries you come from, where Venezuelan migrants face the disinterest of the country’s diplomatic offices. The government’s ruling political elite speaks of socialism while organizing large dinners in hotels, restaurants, and Government chambers while thousands of children go to bed with nothing in their stomachs. They talk about the country’s economic recovery while wages continue to fall. Where is the growth of the economy going? Who benefits from the growing economy? It is not the working people. - POLITICS
The political freedoms of the people who live by the sweat of their faces are in a dramatic situation: The right to strike and protest is confiscated in Venezuela, and there is no possibility for workers’ complains to be interpreted simply for what they are. The working class cannot rally as they would in your country because they risk being accused as conspirators or traitors. Would that be alright to happen in your country? We have dozens of labor leaders and workers prosecuted, persecuted, or imprisoned just for asking for a wage increase. Even worse, to think and defiantly voice opinions from below that bother the bureaucratic officials, the nouveau-riche, and those from above turn, is turn into a crime. - DEMOCRACY
Without the Left there is no democracy: It does not exist organically within the PSUV -nor in its political and intellectual leadership or territorial militancy. Those committed to the project of sovereignty and peoples power drawn by Chávez are invalidated by the factions that defend the inoculation of the neo-liberal consensus. All leftist parties that stood by Chávez are today under judicial investigation or intervened, and their rightful political leaderships stripped of the legal representation of their organizations. Handpicked impostors by the organs of power are rewarded for assaulting political organizations with a decades-long tradition of struggle. In Venezuela, being and thinking critically, as you would in your country of origin, leads to the immediate intervention of the political organizations. However, the left remains organized in the territories, embracing dreams of a better tomorrow and hoping for a brighter future. For the government, politics is reduced to obedience to its decisions. Chávez’s rebellious political thinking only remains in the slogans and the official use in political acts. They have stripped Chávez of his popular and rebellious character. - FASCISM
Whenever there are political tensions in the country, the right-wing leads fascist outbreaks of hatred and violence. It’s true that the fascist right wing has grown in Venezuela, both from the old conservative and social democratic parties, now converted into fierce anti-socialists, as well as in the PSUV that has assumed neoliberal post-socialism as its ideology. This situation has built a path for consensus that threatens to become a new Social Pact (government – opposition), which attacks democratic freedoms and the earned rights of the working class and the people. In Venezuela, a neofascism is hatching in which the government, PSUV, and the extremist right-wing opposition are its breeders. The peculiarity is that the government pretends to conceal it with an anti-fascist discourse void of concrete expression in the Venezuelan reality. Why are the rights to abortion, equal marriage, the legalization of marijuana, the right to strike, and the rights of workers being disregarded, installing the fear of dissent? Why were dozens of teenagers arrested after July 28? And why did the government and the right-wing opposition turn their backs on them? Anti-fascism serves as a farce concealing neoliberal authoritarianism: the social protest after July 28 -popular and peaceful (only marginally fascist and violent)- was successfully controlled through judicialization and state-parapolice repression. Transcending the electoral political conflict, the continuity of the economic model of exploitation and plundering, and the defense of the interests of capital demand sharpening the juridical-political and ideological devices to control social conflict and class struggle. Today, the legislation against blockade, hatred, and anti-fascist expressions, as well as laws on NGOs and electoral procedures, aim at strengthening this domination device under the excuse of a fascist threat. - GEOPOLITICS
Anti-imperialism is observed with Chevron: Blaming the sanctions for the worsening social conditions omits the fact that the deterioration precedes them. However, there is no doubt that sanctions deepen the degradation. The increase in the levels of oil production in the last few years makes it possible to supply energy to the gringos they claim to fight while they allow them to extract oil without paying a single cent to the nation. Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have never delivered oil in such neo-colonial conditions, and the profits do not improve the daily life of the Venezuelan people. A declarative anti-imperialism is only a slogan used as a posture for the nouveau-riche of Venezuela. - NEOLIBERALISM
How the bourgeoisie is constituted in Venezuela: The bourgeoisie has been formed around the seizure of the oil rent, the advantages in the exchange market, import licenses, and customs and tax exonerations. Having political power is the hurdle to jump to get rich. That is why the radical right-wing and Madurismo are fighting like beasts for the control of the government because both sectors are part of the old and new bourgeoisie. There is no revolutionary productive model or remnants of productive resistance. There is a plundering of natural resources and a liberalization of the economy. - THE LANDS
The lands that Chávez gave to the campesinos returned to the hands of the landowners: Zamora´s ideal land for those who work it promoted by Chávez, is nowadays a caricature. What was granted to the campesinos and served with justice is nowadays taken away from them. The former owners of the land feel heard and cared for by Maduro’s government. To make matters worse, in the last few years, 12 million hectares have been handed over to international agribusiness in what they called the Eastern Agrarian Special Economic Zone. - PRODUCTION
A farewell to the factories recovered: Maduro’s government has just handed over 350 public enterprises to the bourgeoisie in Conindustria’s realm as an arrangement to close deals with all the bourgeois factions. Meanwhile, the workers of these enterprises have not yet received their severance payments or social benefits. It is the Pax of the rich and the pacts of the crooks. - BOLIVARIANISM
Democracy on Bolivarianism’s ground: Chávez called us to build a revolution with democracy as our political weapon in 1996. Millions of Venezuelans supported him and even built advanced forms of participation. Today, democracy is only elections, its results accommodated to the needs of those in power. The electoral process of July 28, in which millions of Venezuelans participated, ended up being a mockery as the National Electoral Council proceeded against the law and the Venezuelan electoral tradition, violating the right to vote and the will of the people. Months after the July 28 election, the people still do not have mechanisms to verify if their will was respected. Democracy is not a matter of FAITH but an exercise verifiable and auditable by the population. Without political democracy, the only thing that can happen is a further weakening of the possibilities of the working class to have a voice. - CHÁVEZ
Chávez´ project has been betrayed: A new Chávez has been tailor-made as a revolutionary caricature for those in power. In the streets, the people know this while continuing to vindicate the Chávez of 1992 «Por Ahora» (For Now). Chávez will return when the resistance against Maduro’s betrayal of the Bolivarian revolutionary project is rewoven. - CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
In 1999, we created a Constitution for a homeland of social justice. The whole project of radical transformation of Venezuelan society is contained in the Constitution we elaborated and approved in a referendum during the rise of popular protagonism. To reform it when neoliberal and authoritarian ideas strive can only mean a step backward in our legal framework. There is a well-known phrase Chávez used to say «Everything within the Constitution and nothing outside of it». - ORGANIZING
In words of Guaraní writer Tadeo Zarratea “We do not want to change the commissioner or the judge. That is not going to do any good.” We are bothered by our reality, which is what we want to change. We organized ourselves precisely to change it. We ask you to understand that the people are not in the presidential palace governing. - TO ACCOMPANY
We want to encounter with popular movements and the left that struggle: We cherish a dialogue with you from the standpoint of the people who organize and resist. We know that you breathe and accompany the struggles in your people. Today we ask you to support the struggles of the Venezuelan people, not the survival of those who profit from power in their name.
We would like to leave you with a brief thought: During the last 25 years in Venezuela there has been a revolution and a government, as simultaneous processes. For many years, the Revolution composed of social movements, trade unions, organizations, and political parties under the leadership of Hugo Chávez reached epic moments building a transformative social model. In this manner, the Revolution opened the advancement of a productive economy and employment, peoples´ organizations, rebellion, fair redistribution of wealth, and unceasing strain with imperialism and the unpatriotic bourgeoisie. With Chávez at the head, we reached the government, which was fundamental in the conquests of the Revolution, and a revolutionary and popular political direction developed. In the last 10 years, the Bolivarian Revolution has lost protagonism and is no longer present in the government policies. The results are in plain sight. In this document, we address some of them, hoping that we could discuss them with you. Do not be misled, and do not believe that by supporting the government, you are supporting the Bolivarian Revolution.
We invite you to this other dream of social justice. One that our people is weaving, always unbowed and rebellious, even if it seems composed.
Lxs Comunes, January 2025