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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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<h1 class="reader-title">Venezuela’s Missile Crisis: A
Conversation with Juan Contreras</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Cira Pascual Marquina –
ebruary 16, 2019<br>
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<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p><strong>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 </strong><strong>Guaido’s</strong><strong>
declaring himself president – saw the opposition to
</strong><strong>trying</strong><strong> evoke the
memory of pro-democracy rebellion that began on
January 23, 1958. How do you understand this effort
of Juan </strong><strong>Guaido</strong><strong>
and his imperialist masters to appropriate that
historical event, which was essentially a leftist
victory, in the name of a coup d’etat?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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 </strong><strong>and</strong><strong>
El Salvador. How would you interpret, from a
geopolitical standpoint, our current situation?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 “<em>cambalache</em>”
[exchange]: I let you have Venezuela, and in return
you let me have Syria. This resembles what we saw in
1962.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair">Iran-Contra
affair</a>, 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>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?</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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: “<em>lo </em><em>que</em><em>
es </em><em>igual</em><em> no es </em><em>trampa</em>”
[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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_(Colombia)">ELN</a>
and in Brazil, there are the campesinos of the <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landless_Workers%27_Movement">MST</a>
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.</p>
<p><strong>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 </strong><strong>pacting</strong><strong>
between power groups.</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://venezuelanalysis.com/tag/communal-state">communal
state</a> 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 <a
href="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">straw
caught up in the winds of revolution</a>.</p>
<p>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!</p>
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