
Published 01/17/2025 11:42 | Edited 01/17/2025 12:05
On January 10, 2025, Nicolás Maduro Moros took office as the constitutional president of Venezuela, renewing his government until 2031. Without unity, the opposition has sectors that accepted the results of the electoral election, while others allege fraud, qualifying the government as a dictatorship . Internationally, this situation repeats itself. There are governments that recognize Maduro as president and others that do not. As it is the largest oil reserve in the world and has been carrying out a revolutionary political process for 26 years, Venezuela divides opinions and is a very important piece in the chessboard of global geopolitics.
International politics, in general, and Latin America in particular, is experiencing a reality of very strong polarization between left-wing and extreme-right forces. In addition to Venezuela, this is the case in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador, for example. In these places, either the extreme right leads the current government, or it manages to lead the opposition to the current progressive government, obtaining at least 40% of voting intentions.
In general terms, this polarization is the result of the constant increase in social inequality in the overwhelming majority of countries on all continents, combined with a powerful cognitive war promoted by far-right leaders in conjunction with Big Techs. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin use their companies (such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, X, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon) to convert them into tools that profit from the control of our emotions and our way of thinking about the world. Added to this far-right club are other transnational companies, such as Bunge, Cargill, Bayer, Boeing and others. Everyone benefits from this system of reproduction of inequality and social disintegration.
It is in the wake of this polarization, combined with the election of Donald Trump, that the Venezuelan far right seeks its place in the sun. Spreading lies and terror in the country, destabilizing the Maduro government and bringing accountability to its bosses in the North. After all, this agenda of permanent attack, of maximum pressure against the governments of Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, has been the strategy pursued by the extremist sector of the country’s opposition, subordinate to Washington.
Just like Leopoldo López, Henrique Capriles and Juan Guaidó, the duo Maria Corina and Edmundo González have had the support of the United States, the mainstream Western media and social networks to promote a campaign of defamation and destabilization since Chávez’s election in 1998.
In the last 26 years, all these figures have defended the economic and diplomatic blockade, the guarimbas, the threats of military intervention and the physical and political persecution of Chavistas. Soon after the confirmation of Maduro’s victory by the National Electoral Council, this fascist sector of the opposition activated the comanditos – mercenaries paid to pursue and assassinate Chavista militants – and staged false kidnappings (such as the recent alleged disappearance of Maria Corina, who minutes later herself went public to deny the incident) and began a tour of Europe, the United States and Latin America to garner support from the governments of these countries, so that they recognize Edmundo Gonzalez as the elected president and Mature as a dictator.
However, once again, this coup sector is failing and is heading towards dehydration. Firstly, because he lost the elections and, when he calls for mobilizations in the streets against Chavismo, the result has always been very meager. Secondly, because Chavismo has been permanently mobilized in the streets and in large numbers, before, during and after the elections. Third, of the almost 200 countries in the world, more than 120 have already recognized Maduro as president and the bloc of those who do not is led by the same countries that embarked on the farce of the past, of the self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó.
It is with an eye on this polarized international situation, the rise of fascism and its global coordination, that the Venezuelan government and its president have firmly invested in an international anti-fascist articulation, making Venezuela the country that convenes popular organizations, intellectuals and activists from all over the world – to fight for a world of peace, justice and work – to build unity in the anti-imperialist struggle and for sovereignty. Creating and strengthening national anti-fascist fronts, this has been Chavismo’s international response to this violent, selfish and unequal world in which we live.
Furthermore, internally, the Maduro government has given broad support to the deepening and expansion of communes. And this is the key to all the mobilization and popular support that sustains the advancement of the Bolivarian Revolution. Communes are the organizational form of territorial socialism, of building popular power from the base of Venezuelan society. And that is exactly what you will hear nothing – or almost nothing – about in the media, on social media or from a right-wing activist. Chavismo has an organized and mobilized people, while the opposition has no country project, no unity and no people.
More than the largest oil reserve, Venezuela is among the largest reserves of gold and biodiversity in the world and has a privileged geographic position. It also represents a new paradigm of human relations and power in the 21st century. Communes are the cell for the construction of socialism in the country, embodying the popular organization to work and produce, confronting and taking political power from the state bureaucracy and the ruling class to define and build their own destiny.
The quality of the popular organization, the accumulation of forces by the anti-imperialist left and the alliance between the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the Maduro government, the Armed Forces and police, the Communes, the militias and the Chavista militancy matters and a lot. It is these social sectors that, by force, support and defend the sovereignty and self-determination of the Venezuelan people. Anyone who does not defend this entire project and calls themselves left-wing is either asleep, or naive, or cowardly, or ill-informed. Commune or nothing, sovereignty or nothing, socialism or nothing, left or nothing. And there are still those who are asking for electoral records in the middle of this whole story.
There are many contradictions in this process, that’s for sure. Sanctions make people’s lives difficult and open the way to corruption and destabilization. On the one hand, salaries and, on the other, state bureaucracy – which at certain times hinder the advancement of communal socialism – are real challenges.
With powerful global enemies and allies and a strong strategy to strengthen popular power and socialism, the Maduro government continues with the responsibility of sustaining a political process that makes Venezuela the epicenter of the class struggle throughout Latin America.
Source: vermelho.org.br