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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/50-venezuela/">https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/50-venezuela/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">We Don’t Listen to the Dying Government of Donald Trump: The Fiftieth Newsletter (2020)</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">December 10, 2020 - Vijay Prashad<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_33177" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Madhuri-Shukla_Wring_USA-7.jpg" alt="Madhuri Shukla (USA), Wring, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="326" height="427"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33177" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Madhuri Shukla (USA), <i>Wring</i>, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>Dear friends,</p>
<p>Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.</p>
<p>The night before the National Assembly elections in Venezuela,
President Nicolás Maduro spoke to a group of visitors at Miraflores
Palace in Caracas. He recounted how he had been a member of the
Constituent Assembly, which was formed in 1999 and set up the legal
framework for Venezuela’s political system. Maduro told the visitors
that he had been a member of the National Assembly during its first and
second terms (2000-2005 and 2005-2010 respectively), and he was the
president of the National Assembly during its second term before being
asked to take on the post of foreign minister. During the election of
the National Assembly’s fourth term (2015-2020), the Socialist Unity
Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he leads, lost the majority in the
National Assembly ‘because we made mistakes’, he told me. ‘Let’s be
clear’.</p>
<p>When the fourth National Assembly took its seat in Caracas, it was
used by the United States government and a section of the Venezuelan
right wing in their attempt to overthrow the government of Maduro and
the Bolivarian Revolution. From within the National Assembly, the US
government and the most extreme elements of the Venezuelan opposition
plucked out an obscure politician, Juan Guaidó, and selected him as
their instrument to delegitimise the politics of Venezuela. The US State
Department bizarrely appointed Guaidó as the president of Venezuela,
his authority almost entirely derived from the pronouncements of US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. All attempts to overthrow the government
of President Maduro failed, although the US escalation of sanctions and
the forced seizure of more Venezuelan assets outside the country have
taken a severe toll on the people of Venezuela and on the country’s
ability to fully exercise its sovereignty.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33127" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Daniela-Ruggeri-Tricontinental_Hybrid-War_EN-2.jpg" alt="Daniela Ruggeri / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (Argentina), Hybrid Wars, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="303" height="427"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33127" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Daniela Ruggeri / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (Argentina), <i>Hybrid Wars</i>, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>According to the Venezuelan Constitution, the fourth National
Assembly’s term lapsed in December 2020, which means an election had to
be held to seat the fifth National Assembly. This election was held on 6
December. Shortly before the election, I met with a series of political
leaders in Caracas who oppose the government of President Maduro and
contested the National Assembly election against the PSUV candidates.
‘We are the invisible opposition’, said Pedro José Rojas, a leader of
Acción Democrática (AD), which, alongside the Comité de Organización
Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI), form the <i>partidocracia</i>
or the old political establishment. These parties are against the
government, but not against the political system and are not in favour
of the extreme opposition of Guaidó or the US attempt at regime change.</p>
<p>The US unilateral sanctions, Rojas said, ‘have had a devastating
impact for the Venezuelan people. They have not fulfilled what they are
supposed to do’; namely to conduct regime change by the range of hybrid
war techniques employed by the US government against Venezuela since the
election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. Juan Carlos Alvarado, a leader of
COPEI, said that ‘the blockade has had a terrible impact on the
country’. In fact, the entirety of the opposition that is participating
in the elections and that believes that the democratic way is the only
way forward say that in 2021 they would like to work with the President
to set up a commission to investigate the harsh impact of these US
sanctions on all Venezuelan people.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33117" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Ce%CC%81sar-Mosquera_War-Media_Venezuela-5.jpg" alt="César Mosquera / Utopix (Venezuela), War Media, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="302" height="427"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33117" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>César Mosquera / Utopix (Venezuela), <i>War Media</i>, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>Guaidó and the extreme, undemocratic opposition – alongside the US government and the European Union – had argued <i>long before the election</i> that the 6 December election was fraudulent; after the election, both the <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-condemns-venezuelas-fraudulent-legislative-elections/">US</a> and the <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/90032/venezuela-declaration-high-representative-behalf-eu-elections-national-assembly_en">European Union</a> offered stale statements of condemnation. The US State Department has on several occasions <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/12/02/venezuela-wins-simply-by-holding-an-election/">interfered</a>
in the election by sanctioning the officials in the National Electoral
Council (CNE), including its president, by sanctioning opposition
candidates, and by shaping a storyline that focused on unproven
allegations of fraud. Opposition politicians such as Bruno Gallo
(Avanzada Progresista) and Timoteo Zambrano (Cambiemos) told me that
there is no fraud in this election, but only the normal irregularities
(such as, they said, that the state media favours the incumbent;
although private media favours the opposition). Gallo told me that he
had spent ten years looking closely at the CNE for fraud, with the
intent to undermine it, but could not find any evidence of sustained
fraud. This is a fair election, they said, as far as elections go.</p>
<p>The result came in by nightfall: the PSUV won a majority of the
seats, although both the right-wing and left-wing opposition earned a
third of the votes. On a lovely December day in Caracas, more than five
million people came to polling centres across the country to cast their
ballots. The turnout – near 32% – is about average for a
non-presidential election, particularly due to the pandemic, the
shortages of fuel (which hamper transportation), and the atmosphere of
fear created by the extreme right-wing calls for boycotts. In
comparison, an <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/12/07/social-democrats-re-emerge-as-single-largest-party-in-romanian-elections/">election</a> in Romania on the same day saw a turnout of 30% and the municipal <a href="https://www.tse.go.cr/">election</a>
in Costa Rica in February this year saw 34% of the electorate come to
vote. There was no violence in the country, nor were there any serious
complaints of fraud to the CNE. The morning after the election,
Venezuela’s foreign minister Jorge Arreaza said of the election campaign
and voting that Venezuela has completed a ‘peaceful journey where
democracy triumphed and where the Venezuelan people triumphed’.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33107" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Anonymous_Foreign-Interference-in-Hong-Kong_Hong-Kong-China-6.jpg" alt="Anonymous (Hong Kong, China), Foreign Interference in Hong Kong, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="302" height="427"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33107" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Anonymous (Hong Kong, China), <i>Foreign Interference in Hong Kong</i>, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>Since the election campaign run by a popular movement led by Hugo
Chávez in 1998, the United States and its allies have waged a hybrid war
against the possibility of a different future for Venezuela and for
Latin America. The term ‘hybrid war’ is a key concept of our work at
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, since it has helped focus
our attention on the many new forms of warfare used by the United
States and its allies against anyone who challenges US authority. Our
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier for January 2021
will provide a conjunctural analysis of the world situation and properly
develop the concept of hybrid war.</p>
<p>Rather than conduct a frontal military attack against its
adversaries, the US has gone to war along axes such as diplomacy,
communications, trade, and commerce. For instance, the control of US
media organisations to shape the narrative of world affairs has been
used as a weapon against US adversaries such as Venezuela, whose
government is described by this media as a ‘regime’ and not a
‘government’, and whose struggles in a complex world are blamed entirely
on government policy or ‘corruption’ rather than on the impact of
colonialism, the intensification of inequalities by the capitalist world
system, and the harsh attack by the imperialist powers – including the
sanctions regime.</p>
<p>As part of this information war, a front of the hybrid war, it is
important for the US and the European Union to delegitimise Venezuela’s
political culture and to therefore reject this election; the statements
released by the European Union and the US were probably written days
before the actual election, because they do not reflect at all the
events that took place on 6 December. The European Union did not send
observers to Venezuela, and therefore based their own statement on their
prejudices rather than on credible reports from the ground. I was an
electoral observer for the CNE and would like to say – in my personal
and professional opinion – that I saw no evidence of fraud in the
election; this was also the view of the opposition leaders who told me
categorically that they did not believe that there was any fraud in the
election.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33157" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Gabriel-Marti%CC%81nez-and-Sonia-Di%CC%81az_Economy_Spain-8.jpg" alt="Gabriel Martínez and Sonia Díaz / Un Mundo Feliz (Spain), Hybrid War Economy, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="302" height="427"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33157" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Gabriel Martínez and Sonia Díaz / Un Mundo Feliz (Spain), <i>Hybrid War Economy</i>, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>Hybrid war takes on many forms, and none of them are easy to visualise. In this fourth and final <a href="https://antiimperialistweek.org/en/exhibitions/hybrid-wars/">Anti-Imperialist Poster Exhibition: Hybrid War</a>,
39 artists from 18 countries contributed posters that help give visual
expression to this defining concept of our times. This exhibition was
launched on 3 December in solidarity with the people of Venezuela in the
lead up to the National Assembly election. It looks at how the US-led
hybrid war manifests itself from Venezuela to India, from Cuba to China
to Brazil and beyond. These posters are a living testimony to people’s
struggles against imperialism.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33167" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jorge-Luis-Rodri%CC%81guez-Aguilar_Hybrid-War-Cuba-1.jpg" alt="Jorge Luis Rodríguez-Aguilar (Cuba), Hybrid War, 2020" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="302" height="427"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33167" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Jorge Luis Rodríguez-Aguilar (Cuba), <i>Hybrid War</i>, 2020</span></p></div>
<p>On the night before the election, President Maduro said that the
Venezuelan people expected that the US would deny the validity of the
election and prevent the Venezuelan political representatives from
forwarding an agenda needed to solve the grave problems that the
Venezuelan people face. ‘The US said that they do not accept the results
of the elections a long time before the elections took place’, Maduro
told me at Miraflores. ‘We don’t listen to the dying government of
Donald Trump’.</p>
<p>The new National Assembly will take its seat on 5 January, fifteen
days before the transfer of power in the United States (where Trump also
alleged fraud). The US, Maduro said, ‘does not decide what we do in
Venezuela’. This is true politically, but because of the US control over
information and economic activity through control over parts of the
financial system and through payment reconciliation systems, the US does
constrain the possibility of Venezuela to act on behalf of its people.
Hugo Chávez used to say ‘viviremos y venceremos’ – we will live, and we
will overcome. That is the sentiment inside Venezuela across the
various political lines; it is what gives hope to people.</p>
<p>Warmly,</p>
<p>Vijay.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/50-venezuela/?output=pdf">Download as PDF</a> </p></div></div></div>
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