National Executive Committee
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)
End the Interference in Venezuela
The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) joins with people all over the world to demand that the United States stop interfering in the internal affairs of the sovereign nation of Venezuela. This interference is intended to embolden the political right and to cause such internal turmoil as to destabilize the current democratically-elected government until it is overthrown.
We demand an end to US efforts to isolate Venezuelan diplomats from normal international interaction, stop efforts to blockade and weaken the Venezuelan economy, and end support for internal opposition elements who are engaging in violence and physical destruction in the streets of Caracas. We applaud and support the efforts of Pope Francis to launch a negotiation to end the violent conflict between the Maduro government and opposition factions.
United States Opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution
Senate Bill S-1018 (Venezuelan Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act of 2017”) introduced in May, 2017 is designed to escalate interference in the internal politics of Venezuela. The Alliance for Global Justice indicates that the proposed legislation includes provisions that construes criminal conduct in Venezuela as political repression, provides “humanitarian assistance” to opposition groups, urges the Organization of American States to ostracize Venezuela for violating democracy, isolates Venezuelan diplomats from participating in international organizations because of charges of drug dealing or corruption, and expands an economic embargo to increase the misery experienced by the majority of Venezuelan citizens.
The Senate Bill is just one of the most recent examples of a twenty-year strategy to undermine and overthrow the populist Venezuelan government launched by Hugo Chavez. This United States effort at regime change included supporting a military coup against him in 2002. After the untimely death of Chavez in 2013, his replacement, Nicholas Maduro, has been subjected to escalated US subversion of the government and support for wealthy Venezuelans who have launched a civil war against the democratically elected government. What Chavistas call the Bolivarian Revolution, an historic project of the Latin American people to gain their national sovereignty from imperial control of the United States, is now threatened with a violent civil war against the regime. The majority of the population of Venezuela now experience food shortages, inflated prices, and reduced resources for maintaining newly created grassroots institutions including health care and worker cooperatives. While the root causes of the crisis are many, including an over-reliance on an oil-based export economy, the problems the country face are inextricably connected to US-based subversion and efforts to overthrow the government by the Venezuelan wealthy class.
What is taking place in Venezuela is a right-wing reaction to a popular revolution
The revolution began with the Bolivarian movement conceived under the presidency of the late Hugo Chavez. Since the untimely demise of Chavez, the movement has pressed forward, expanding and consolidating its gains, discomforting the Venezuelan affluent classes and their allies in Washington, DC. Historically revolutionary resistance to big power dominance invariably generates violent backlash from those who cling to wealth and power in the international system and their partners within societies.
The long-standing subversion of Venezuela is virtually a repeat of what happened in Chile during the early 1970s. The Popular Unity government headed by Salvador Allende was successful in promoting revolutionary goals until a U.S. backed coup killed him and overthrew the legally-elected Allende government. Thousands were tortured and murdered, and Chilean society was set back for decades, a trauma from which it has been taking years to heal.
With popular movements rising everywhere in the twenty-first century, it is imperative that progressives support revolutionary change in other countries first and foremost by staunch opposition to our own government’s imperial foreign policy aims. The struggles against racism at home, for single-payer health care, and economic justice for workers are parallel to and connected to the struggles proceeding all across the globe. “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
l Krehbiel
Rafael Pizarro
Harry Targ
Janet Tucker
Co-Chairs, CCDS
cc-ds-discussion.org
