[News] Venezuela’s Missile Crisis: A Conversation with Juan Contreras

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14328


  Venezuela’s Missile Crisis: A Conversation with Juan Contreras

By Cira Pascual Marquina – ebruary 16, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Juan Contreras was born and raised in Caracas’s 23 de Enero barrio, 
famous for its revolutionary political activism and internationalism. A 
graduate of Venezuela’s Central University, Contreras was active in 
Bandera Roja, under the direction of Comandante Geronimo (Carlos 
Betancourt) in the late 1970s. Today he heads up the community 
organization, Coordinadora Simon Bolivar, in the heart of working class 
Caracas. In this exclusive interview with Venezuelanalysis, Contreras 
looks at the historical echoes of the current coup attempt and reminds 
us of all that is a stake./

*The claim that politics inevitably involves a struggle over historical 
meanings received spectacular confirmation in recent weeks. That’s 
because the political crisis that we are in the midst of right now – 
following Juan **Guaido’s**declaring himself president – saw the 
opposition to **trying**evoke the memory of pro-democracy rebellion that 
began on January 23, 1958. How do you understand this effort of Juan 
**Guaido**and his imperialist masters to appropriate that historical 
event, which was essentially a leftist victory, in the name of a coup 
d’etat?*

I would begin by saying that there would never have been a February 4, 
1992 [when Chavez tried to take power by insurrection] without the 
[democratic rebellion of] January 23, 1958. If indeed it’s true that the 
opposition and the right-wing Venezuelan oligarchy have been trying for 
some time to appropriate symbolic dates such as January 23 or February 
12 [Youth Day], it’s still true that those events are symbolic for our 
people.

The great protagonist over all these years has been the popular masses, 
whose trajectory of struggle reaches a long way back. There is a 
powerful historical current that reaches back to [indigenous leader] 
Guaicaipuro who struggled against the colonizers, to Jose Leonardo 
Chirinos who fought to establish a republic and to abolish slavery, to 
our nineteenth-century liberators Miranda, Bolivar, and Sucre, and to 
Ezequiel Zamora with his call for freeing the land and people in 1846. 
We could also include the democratic rebellion of January 23, 1958, the 
Caracazo of February 1989, and the civilian-military insurrections of 
February 4 and November 27, 1992

We descend from all this! That historical legacy is the work of our 
people, and it has accompanied us in these times as one of our important 
strengths. Well, that legacy belongs to the people and not to a few 
“leaders” who are bowing down to the designs of US imperialism. To rally 
their followers, they have to use the US flag! They even call for an 
invasion, when all of us know that even in the twenty-first century 
there are no bombs that kill only Chavistas or only hunt down Chavistas!

That revolutionary historical legacy is the antithesis of everything 
that the opposition is doing today. What they are doing doesn’t have any 
basis in our revolutionary history, because that history is marked by a 
high degree of popular participation. The popular masses paid for this 
struggle with their lives: they paid a high price in blood. That is to 
say, the struggle during all of these years and even centuries – 500 
years of struggle, in fact – has been the work of the poor people: the 
Bolivarian and Chavista people.

*In examining the international panorama, would you say that Trump is 
taking a step back in the Middle East to recuperate US power in its 
so-called backyard? What is going on in the continent today appears 
similar to the rollback process of the ‘80s under Reagan: US 
interventionism in Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua **and**El Salvador. How 
would you interpret, from a geopolitical standpoint, our current situation?*

I would like to begin by saying that what is happening now is quite 
similar to what happened in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fidel 
Castro had a conversation with Che Guevara, and Che told him that the 
crisis would unfortunately be resolved from above: Cuba would not have a 
say in the missile issue. Indeed, the meeting happened in the upper 
spheres of world power, between the USSR and the United States. Cuba was 
not an actor in its own history. It is possible that we may be in a very 
similar moment in history today. History is cyclical, and there are 
episodes that repeat themselves.

Why does today’s situation recall the Missile Crisis? Well, after the 
meeting between Putin and Trump, a shift in the geopolitical chessboard 
began to take shape: the US starts pulling troops out of Syria (although 
troops still remain there), and more recently a withdrawal of troops 
from Iraq was signed by US authorities. Thus, it would seem that, from a 
geopolitical point of view and when faced with an important crisis, the 
current relations of power are such that only the big players can sit at 
the table: our government doesn’t sit at the table. I believe we could 
be facing a situation in which these two powers came on to an agreement: 
what is happening in Syria points to that and the developments in 
Venezuela could be a counterpart.

Venezuela is the “backyard” of the US while Russia needs control of 
Syria and the region around it to ensure the construction of a gas 
pipeline… In barrio slang what we are facing might be a “/cambalache/” 
[exchange]: I let you have Venezuela, and in return you let me have 
Syria. This resembles what we saw in 1962.

We could also look back to the 1980s, as you suggest. That was the era 
of the US-led intervention in Central America. And that disastrous 
episode seems all the more close, when we learn that the US advisor for 
the Venezuelan crisis is Elliott Abrams. He is a well known figure, with 
a warmongering history. Abrams was convicted for his participation in 
the Iran-Contra affair 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair>, but he also 
supported counterinsurgency in El Salvador and Guatemala, and he 
encouraged the Panama invasion. All this reveals the US’s undeniably 
hawkish attitude towards Venezuela. There is no doubt about it: they are 
determined to having full control of their “backyard.”

That takes us back 200 years. The Monroe Doctrine [1823], which was 
designed by John Quincy Adams but got James Monroe’s name attached to 
it, can be summarized with the phrase “America for the Americans.” It 
was a warning from the US to Europe: any European participation in Latin 
America would be considered, by the US, an act of interference. That 
doctrine is alive and well today, two centuries later.

The current confrontation has two elements. The obvious one has to do 
with the US’s open interest in our resources, but I would dare to say 
that more important than that is the US’s deep antagonism to the 
Bolivarian doctrine, which is the one that has oriented this process for 
the past two decades. Bolivar wanted to construct a bloc of republics as 
one nation … [Tellingly] when reflecting on this in the 1820s, Bolivar 
said: “The United States appears destined by Providence to plague 
America with miseries in the name of liberty.”

We are going through this first-hand once again. Two hundred years 
later, the confrontation continues the logic of the Monroe Doctrine: the 
US’s pretensions to control what they always considered their backyard. 
And just as at that time, Venezuela was in the vanguard of the 
independence struggle, so today we have to play again the role of a 
continental vanguard.

In Venezuela, what is at stake is not only the destiny of the Bolivarian 
Process, but also the destiny of Latin America and the Caribbean as a 
whole. Together they make up what Bolivar called “Meridional America,” 
and it is an open battlefield in which the destiny of Latin America and 
the Caribbean is at stake.

*As Bolivarians and Latin American patriots, how should we respond to 
the imperialist offensive which attempts to generate conflicts among 
nations in the region? You mention that US imperialism is against 
Bolivarianism. It aims to rupture continental alliances using 
governments such as those of Brazil and Colombia, which now are towing 
the US line. How can we counteract the US’s efforts to undermine Latin 
American unity?*

Here we have to go back to Bolivar again. Bolivar sought to integrate 
the Latin American republics, aiming to make them into one single 
nation. By contrast, the Monroe Doctrine tries to divide our peoples. 
Today, we see that they are determined to do so once again. We only need 
to look at the rise of figures such as Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque, 
who represents the Colombian oligarchy and the interests of the Global 
North, or Jair Bolsonaro, who represents the ultra-right of Brazil, or 
Mauricio Macri in Argentina.

The rise of these figures marks a setback for the left in the continent, 
compared with the two previous decades in which the processes of 
building Latin American unity were advancing. Clearly, we are now going 
in reverse in as much as these new governments are imperialist puppets. 
They are the local representatives of US interests, and their agressions 
take place not only on the frontier, but also in the sphere of public 
politics and media campaigns, working constantly to divide Latin America.

In contrast with diplomacy on a state and government level (which is 
often penetrated by foreign interests), there can also be “people’s 
diplomacy.” In other words, the popular sphere should try to coordinate 
and organize itself [across national boundaries]. The International 
Assembly of the Peoples[ link] that is going to happen at the end of 
February in Caracas could be an important step in this direction, if 
it’s not coopted. People’s diplomacy is the way to resolve this conflict 
and avoid confrontation amongst sister nations.

How to push for integration? It can only be achieved from below, in the 
popular sphere. There are so many projects in Latin America that should 
be brought together! Campesinos, factory workers, the indigenous 
peoples, students, and barrio dwellers. There is a local saying here in 
Venezuela: “/lo //que//es //igual//no es //trampa/” [If there’s a level 
playing field, things are fair]. Our enemies believe in diplomacy from 
above and they try to attack the Bolivarian Process with those tactics, 
by pitting governments against each other, and with the threat of a 
military intervention. Our self-defense has to work in the opposite way. 
It has to be like the people and reach beyond borders. Bolivarianism is 
equivalent to the ideology of popular continental unity.

We should not fall into isolationist positions, but rather work with 
those who struggle and those groups that break with chauvinist attitudes 
(which although they aren’t new in Venezuela need to be overcome). In 
Colombia there are the guerrilleros of the ELN 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_(Colombia)> and 
in Brazil, there are the campesinos of the MST 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landless_Workers%27_Movement> who have a 
long trajectory of struggle. I think that those kinds of groups are the 
people that we can count on and with whom we must work. Pursuing popular 
integration and fraternity would allow us to consolidate the process of 
continental integration in the face of the disintegration that the US 
wants to foster.

*Defending the country doesn’t have to be limited to responding to media 
attacks or mustering legal arguments. Those kinds of defenses often risk 
becoming part of a spectacle. There could also be a popular response, 
which would advance the revolutionary process and have nothing to do 
with **pacting**between power groups.*

I think there are three elements that have kept the Bolivarian Process 
going during these twenty years. First is the historical memory of the 
emancipation struggle that took place 200 years ago and the Bolivarian 
teachings that accompanied it… This is one of the most important 
legacies that our people have. It has been with us during those twenty 
years of the process, where it serves as a kind a guiding light.

Secondly, there is the well-known unity of the civilians and the 
military. There are people-in-uniform, on the one hand, and 
people-who-are-civilians on the other, but in the end it is the same 
popular mass. Some of the popular classes went to the military because 
of conviction or because of a career, but it is the same popular base. 
The “uniformed people” go through the same stuff that that the civilians 
live through too, which is something we should be aware of.

Thirdly, there is the disposition for change that the Venezuelan people 
have shown. That disposition for change has been evident since the 
Caracazo rebellion of February 1989 when people went to the street and 
buried the International Monetary Fund’s prescriptions. The popular 
revolt against the neoliberal policies that the IMF was trying to hoist 
on our country cost us about 5000 lives.

Those same people who led the revolt and in 1998 elected Chavez as 
president of Venezuela, later approved the new constitution with a new 
presidential period. On October 7, 2012, they re-elected President 
Chavez for the third time and on April 14, 2013 – being loyal to 
Commande Chavez – they elected Nicolas Maduro as president of the 
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

I think that in this [trajectory] you can discern the effort that the 
Venezuelan people have been making. The Venezuelan people’s disposition 
for change has continued, and it is not limited to Chavez’s leadership. 
It has its own life apart from the direction of the revolution: the 
Bolivarian process’s “political-military leadership.”

In Venezuela, the popular masses said “enough.” They are the people that 
got the political process going, and they are the ones who believe in 
the revolution. There is a wide swath of the population that took 
seriously Chavez’s calling for a communal state 
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/communal-state> as a way to advance 
toward Bolivarian socialism. They are the popular masses, and they have 
a history of struggle. It’s these people who make history. As brilliant 
as individuals may be, as important as Bolivar and Chavez are for us 
today, they are but a straw caught up in the winds of revolution 
<http://todochavez.gob.ve/todochavez/4044-palabras-del-comandante-presidente-hugo-chavez-durante-acto-de-entrega-del-premio-hombre-del-ano-en-america-latina-otorgado-por-el-caribbean-exa-award-curazao>.

In Venezuela, the people said “enough” and organized themselves. Despite 
all the things that we can criticize, I am convinced that there is a 
solution, and that solution is with the people. That is to say, the path 
forward for the Bolivarian Process is with the popular masses, with the 
organization of our people: workers, farmers, indigenous peoples, 
students and the popular sectors from the barrios. Our way out is with 
them, with us. There is no solution possible through high-level 
negotiation with power groups. There is no solution that involves 
accepting the blackmail from the North. The solution is with the people. 
And it’s with the people that one has to negotiate, sit down and talk. 
There is no other way!

-- 
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