[News] Venezuela in the Continental Labyrinth

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/13931


  Venezuela in the Continental Labyrinth: A Conversation with Amilcar
  Figueroa

By Amilcar Figueroa and Cira Pascual Marquina - July 11, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

/In the ‘70s, Amilcar Figueroa was part of the insurgent Party of the 
Venezuelan Revolution (PRV), which split off from the Venezuelan 
Communist Party and is widely credited with developing the ideology of 
Bolivarianism that influenced President Hugo Chávez. A committed 
internationalist, Figueroa worked with El Salvador’s FMLN (El Salvador) 
in the ‘80s and, more recently, was honored with a US Treasury 
Department sanction for his support of the Colombian guerrilla. Figueroa 
was president of the Latin American Parliament (PARLATINO) between 2006 
and 2008. As a historian, he has written several books including El 
Salvador: Su historia y sus luchas (Ocean Sur, 2009) and Chávez: la 
permanente búsqueda creadora (Trinchera, 2013). In this interview with 
Venezuelanalysis, we asked him to explain the Bolivarian Process in the 
current continental context./

*Recently, Colombia entered NATO and soon Ivan Duque, an 
ultraconservative close to former president Alvaro Uribe, will become 
the country’s new head of state. Can you analyze the consequences of 
this, both on the continental level and specifically for Venezuela?*

The triumph of Ivan Duque must be situated, just like the Venezuelan 
situation, in the complex panorama of the Latin American situation, 
which unfolds in the context of an overarching struggle between reform 
and counter-reform, revolution and counterrevolution. Moreover, all this 
push and pull must be understood in the context of the United States’ 
recolonizing offensive.

Regarding Colombia, it’s clear that the most reactionary right has long 
been in control of the state. The Colombian state was reactionary, 
anti-popular and pro-imperialist with Alvaro Uribe, with Juan Manuel 
Santos, and it will be so with Ivan Duque. The differences between the 
three leaders are subtle.

Obviously, for reasons that must be examined with precision, the Santos 
government facilitated – or rather allowed – the conversations and the 
peace dialogue in Havana. As is well known, the outcome of the dialogues 
was the incorporation of the FARC into electoral politics. But let’s not 
be fooled: the Santos government was a warmongering one, wielding 
constant violence and repression against the popular movement.

The issue now is whether the Duque government will recognize the Havana 
agreements, which were already being cast aside by sectors of the 
Colombian establishment and were being systematically broken by the 
Colombian state even under Santos’s presidency.

It’s true that the peace so desired by the Colombian people scored some 
important successes with the Havana agreements, but the overall 
situation of violence and social injustice remains in place. Now that 
Duque, a representative of the most retrograde sector of Colombian 
politics, has taken center stage, we are likely to see an even more 
complete rollback of the peace agreements. That, in turn, could send the 
Colombian nation back into an overt conflict of large dimensions.

*Will Duque’s presidency alter the relations of the Colombian government 
vis-a-vis Venezuela? *

Things are not going to change much: Duque, Santos and Uribe share the 
same views regarding geopolitics. The latter two represented a 
continental vanguard in their anti-Bolivarian (and anti-Venezuelan) 
project, and Duque will continue to be part of this drive. It is not, in 
the end, a question of individuals but of the Colombian state, which has 
long been in the service of US interests.

The incorporation of Colombia into NATO (an issue that, by the way, had 
been brewing for a while) further threatens peace in the continent. For 
Venezuela, this is quite serious, since it reinforces the offensive 
against its government.

In the last few years, Venezuelans have repeatedly experienced the 
consequences of Colombia’s being the US’s beachhead on the continent. 
Colombia joining NATO was the logical step after installing seven US 
bases in its territory in 2009 and making additional agreements (less 
public but disclosed) between the US military and Colombia that turn 
Colombian territory into a potential platform for US Southern Command’s 
military actions.

However, we should keep in mind that in the June 17 elections more than 
eight million Colombians rejected Duque and also said no to war; they 
did so by voting for Gustavo Petro. Those eight million votes do not 
even express all the dissent, since the electoral system in Colombia is 
highly problematic. This means that the parliament is not going to be 
absolutely submissive to Duque’s project. They won’t give him a blank 
check, neither for the reactionary establishment’s agenda regarding 
Colombia’s internal politics nor its agenda regarding Venezuela.

*It is evident and worrisome that so many people point the finger at 
Colombia to explain all Venezuela’s problems. According to this way of 
thinking, everything bad – from violence to smuggling – is caused by 
Colombia. Could you tell us something about this?*

Leaving aside national chauvinism, which is surely a problem in 
Venezuela, the spilling over of paramilitary practices from Colombia to 
Venezuela is real and a very serious concern. It endangers spaces of 
popular organization.

As far as smuggling is concerned, there has always been an illegal 
market on the Colombia-Venezuela frontier. It only exists because there 
is complicity on both sides of the border and from both states. 
Smuggling is a practice that has a direct relation with private 
appropriation and accumulation of wealth in a lumpen or mafioso context.

*Latin America is in a process of political regression and the 
Bolivarian Process’ leadership generally espouses a kind of “realist” 
reformism which erodes the original revolutionary project. Can you talk 
to us about the relationship between the overall continental regression 
and the Venezuelan leadership’s tepidness?*

The reactionary counteroffensive taking place in the continent must be 
examined with care and precision. It began in 2008 with the coup d’etat 
in Honduras, and from then on we have seen imperialist interests 
advancing in a series of big steps. This led to a new balance of forces 
in the continent. In Venezuela, things began to change with the 
September 2010 parliamentary elections, in which we lost the popular 
vote. Whether people acknowledge it or not, that event initiated an 
internal shift. Then, in 2014, there was a real turning point in the 
Bolivarian Process.

That March, negotiations began between key representatives of Bolivarian 
Government and the bourgeoisie. The most powerful capitalist in 
Venezuela, Lorenzo Mendoza, became the public spokesperson for 
“production,” and the government made tremendous concessions to the 
sector that he represented. The new balance of forces coupled with the 
fascist right’s violent emergence in the 2014 guarimbas was what 
immediately triggered the negotiations. However, it was the financial 
boycott and the war on different fronts against Venezuela that caused 
the Bolivarian leadership to assume that backing off on revolutionary 
goals was the only way to maintain control of the government.

The death or even assassination of Chavez – who had an impressive 
capacity to find creative (and popular) ways out of difficult situations 
– has had an enormous impact on the revolutionary process. Henceforth, 
with an unfavorable correlation of forces, reformist positions became 
hegemonic within the government. Furthermore, this revolutionary to 
reformist shift is not confined to Venezuela. I believe that, as a 
whole, the continental left’s leadership assumes that there are no 
conditions to advance. Their analysis fails to take into account that a 
profound capitalist crisis of global dimensions spawns tremendous 
violence and enormous suffering, thus creating exceptional conditions 
for an anti-systemic struggle. On the other hand, the Bolivarian 
Process' leadership (and that of the continental left) assumes that 
capitalism is very strong. As a consequence, to avoid social 
confrontation, they think that changes can only be small and gradual.

*How would you characterize the Bolivarian government today?*

When Chavez was leading the revolution there was a constant creative 
search that proposed profound reforms. He opened a path of deep 
revolutionary transformations. But after his death, and when the 
correlation of forces became unfavorable, much of the left and its 
leadership assumed an attitude of class reconciliation. With this shift, 
the Bolivarian Process abandoned its radical character and began sliding 
towards a Keynesian model and a social protectionist project. For 
example, there are many discourses in which Nicolas Maduro calls himself 
“the protector of the people.” In other words, the government’s 
objective now is not that people take power and transform the social and 
economic structures. No, it is rather to generate social welfare 
policies from above.

Of course, this is not the whole story. Those in power do not constitute 
a perfect and unified bloc. However, there is no question that reformist 
positions are the most common ones in our political leadership.

*How can we imagine a “left-solution” to Venezuela’s current crisis?*

To imagine renewing the strategic path towards a revolutionary horizon 
with mass participation has much to do with making advances, taking 
spaces, and developing concrete work from a class-based perspective.

Working people must take on many tasks. The proletariat in this stage 
has to accumulate forces. That is because – whatever our aspirations and 
critical analysis of the situation – it’s impossible to do anything 
without organization. No matter how much imperialism has advanced on the 
continent and reformism has spread in the country, we need to develop a 
conception that allows new political referents to emerge: leaders who 
will take up working people’s revolutionary goals.

Thus, our tasks include building an overarching movement that 
consolidates the spaces that the popular resistance movement has 
created. This would be a movement influenced by Chavez’s proposal of 
popular power, the commune and workers’ councils. All this has to be 
consolidated to defend what has already been achieved at the same time 
as the great objectives of the revolution are revived. Simultaneously, 
there needs to be a process of political education focused on the 
historical revolutionary process and on bringing back to the foreground 
the desires that were unleashed by Chavez, which are latent in much of 
the Venezuelan population.

The truth is that most of the people of Venezuela do not want to return 
to the past and they aspire to build a society of equals.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20180712/1d82e3b2/attachment.htm>