Latin America

By Owen Richards

“I’d do it exactly the same all over again”, Fidel Castro insisted on July 24, making one of his first public appearances since a devastating intestinal illness in 2006 forced him from the public eye. The former president was referring to the failed 1953 attack he led against the Moncada Barracks in Oriente province, which proved to be the opening salvo in the Cuban Revolution. Castro was visiting the municipality of Artemisa to pay tribute to Cuba’s July 26 martyrs. He read a commemorative message to the crowd, describing July 26, 2010, as the “attainment of 57 years of struggle without surrender for the independence of our homeland”.

By Roberto Jorquera

On September 26 the people of Venezuela will again head to the polls, to vote for the 165-member National Assembly. Since 2004 Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution has faced the people in a major election at least once a year: the 2004 regional elections, 2005 National Assembly elections, 2006 presidential elections, 2007 constitutional referendum, 2008 state and municipal elections and 2009 constitutional referendum. No other government in the world has faced so many electoral contests in the last six years.

By Marce Cameron

As all Cuban schoolchildren know, July 26 is the anniversary of the 1953 attack on the Moncada military garrison in Santiago de Cuba that launched the Cuban Revolution. The young rebels, led Fidel Castro, had hoped to seize the garrison, liberate its weapons and call upon the Cuban people to rise up against the US-backed Batista dictatorship. While it failed to achieve its military objective, it succeeded in rousing the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people. The youth who sacrificed themselves, and those who survived the dictatorship’s murderous retribution, became heroes from one end of the Caribbean island to the other. The survivors of the Moncada assault went on to lead the popular revolution that toppled the Batista dictatorship on New Year’s Day, 1959. At first, Washington’s corporate rulers were not overly worried that their thug had been overthrown. They thought the Cuba’s new leaders could be bribed and bullied into becoming a loyal servants of US imperialism. They were wrong, and by the time they realised their mistake, it was too late.

By Eva Golinger, in Caracas

A revealing report published in May 2010 by the FRIDE Institute, a Spanish think tank, prepared with funding from the World Movement for Democracy (a project of the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, NED), has disclosed that international agencies are funding the Venezuelan opposition with a whopping US$40-50 million annually. This exorbitant amount of financing well exceeds the approximately $15 million previously believed to have been channelled to Venezuelan opposition groups via the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the NED.

By Marcus Pabian

In the midst of the highest inflation in seven years, on May 7 Venezuela’s revolutionary working people’s government escalated a campaign against price and currency speculators. President Hugo Chavez declared that his government would create an “export-import corporation to take over middle-class management of the people’s resources”. Chavez explained: “we look stupid handing over dollars to the bourgeoisie … letting them import and overcharge us … they buy something abroad worth one dollar and sell it here for five dollars”.

By Marce Cameron

In April and May, Cubans went to the polls in local government elections across the island. These were elections with a difference. Imagine if neighbours got together in open meetings in your street to nominate, by show of hands, between two and eight candidates for each electoral district. That’s what happened in each of Cuba’s 169 municipalities.

By Vlaudin Vega

[The following article is based on a presentation at the Direct Action Centre in Sydney on May 15 before the screening of a film on the role of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in the country’s political life.]

By Marce Cameron

During the July campus holidays, a dozen youth and students from Australia, England, South Africa and Mauritius will participate in the first Australian Youth and Student Revolutionary Tour of Venezuela and Cuba. The tour is an initiative of the campus-based Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity clubs in collaboration with the mass revolutionary youth organisations in Cuba and Venezuela — Cuba’s Union of Young Communists (UJC) and the youth organisation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela led by President Hugo Chavez.

By Hamish Chitts

Revolutionary Cuba is a leader in Latin America in the battle against homophobia and is taking steps to become a world leader. Since 1994 the age of consent for gay and lesbian sex in Cuba has been 16 years, the same as for heterosexual sex — unlike Australia. Since the 1980s Cubans have been able to access sex reassignment surgery (SRS) as part of Cuba’s free healthcare system. This program was temporarily halted when the combined effects of the US economic blockade and the loss of vital trading partners with the collapse of the Soviet Union forced the Cuban government to make severe economic cutbacks.

By Marcus Pabian

On April 13, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stood before hundreds of thousands of supporters on Bolivar Avenue in Caracas and declared that this date would be commemorated each year as the “Day of the Bolivarian National Militia, the People in Arms and the April Revolution”. On that day eight years ago, Chavez recalled, hundreds of thousands of workers were joined by tens of thousands of soldiers who “put their rifles at the side of the people” in a revolution that defeated the US-backed coup which had overthrown the elected Chavez government on April 11, kidnapped and held Chavez incommunicado, and installed business federation boss Pedro Carmona — to stop Chavez implementing pro-poor policies.

“The bourgeoisie keeps plotting to kill me”, Chavez pointed out. “If they kill me, listen to me, do not lose your head! We have leaders, the party, my generals, my militias, my people. You know what to do. Just take over power throughout Venezuela, absolutely all, sweep away the bourgeoisie from all political and economic spaces and deepen the revolution!”

The trigger for the US-backed coup was Chavez’s determination to keep the promise he made during the 1998 presidential election campaign to eradicate poverty in Venezuela, which soared above 50%, by using wealth created by the oil industry. Chavez moved in 2001 to take control of the formally state-owned oil company PDVSA to redirect its revenues to meet the needs of poor working people; force foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela to become minor shareholders in joint ventures with the PDVSA and other state-owned enterprises; and increase royalties paid by foreign oil companies from 1% to 30%.

The April 13, 2002 New York Times editorial repeated the lie peddled by the coup leaders that Chavez had resigned, despite Chavez having had no contact with the media. The editorial gleefully declared that Chavez’s “resignation” meant that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator”. According to the editorial, Venezuela’s military high command had replaced Chavez with a “respected business leader”. Pedro Carmona accepted the presidency on April 12 and immediately abolished the constitution which had been approved by 71% of voters in a December 1999 referendum. He also dissolved the National Assembly which had been elected on July 30, 2000, and the Supreme Court. These Carmona decrees were signed by leaders of the opposition parties. Meanwhile, pro-coup police killed protesters in the streets calling for the return of Chavez.

“I am sure”, Chavez said, commenting on these events at the April 13 mass rally, “the oligarchy and imperialism believed that if the people went out to the streets as they did [on April 13, 2002], it would end the same as it did during the Caracazo”, when a 1989 spontaneous rebellion by the poor against steep price rises was drowned in blood by the armed forces. “They were sure”, Chavez continued, “the rifles of our soldiers would stop the people’s rebellion, but they were surprised, because despite more than 100 traitorous generals and admirals subservient to the bourgeoisie; the soldiers not only refused to commit a massacre, but they put their rifles at the side of the people”.

As Chavez explained in an interview with Richard Gott shortly following the April 2002 Revolution, “Hundreds of thousands of people all over the country came out against the coup. And where was it that they went to? They assembled at the army barracks, and they did so because of the existing understanding that had been built up between officers and civilians through the Plan Bolivar. It was because of the contacts that had been made between the military and the poorest sectors of society that the people supported the army.”

On April 16, 2002, three days after a worker-soldier revolution had returned Chavez to power, the New York Times ran another editorial claiming it had “overlooked” the undemocratic character of the coup, but admitted that the coup was still welcomed by the US imperialist rulers: “In his three years in office, Mr Chavez has been such a divisive and demagogic leader that his forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington. That reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer.” Unless, of course, it succeeds!

In the months which followed the April Revolution, Chavez “retired” over 400 military officers who had supported the coup. Those who had led the revolution within the armed forces were promoted. The military was now loyal to the interests of Venezuela’s working people and their revolutionary government. The April Revolution was a political revolution ­— it completely broke the control the capitalist class in Venezuela had over the two most important institutions of power in society, the government and armed forces, through mass direct action of the working people, in and out of uniform.

The US-backed capitalist opposition regrouped in the months after the April Revolution and used their managerial control of PDVSA to shut it down on December 2, 2002, in an attempt to cut off the main source of revenue for the Chavez government. The shutdown was supported overwhelmingly by the pro-capitalist managers and highly paid technical workers at PDVSA, who numbered around 18,000 in a company workforce of 40,000. Oil production was reduced from 3 million barrels per day to 150,000. Other employers across Venezuela reinforced the bosses’ oil lockout by closing their own businesses. Poor people were so desperate they eventually began chopping up their own furniture, using it as fuel to cook food.

Five days after the bosses’ lockout began, over 2 million workers and small farmers from across the country flooded the streets of Caracas to rally in support of the Chavez government. The bosses’ lockout was broken by a government-directed campaign by oil production workers and soldiers to take control of PDVSA installations, carefully undoing dangerous sabotage, reopening ports and restarting refineries over the course of two months.

In a nationally televised address on January 10, 2003, with control of PDVSA now in the hands of the working people’s government, Chavez stated: “Only now can we say the PDVSA has begun to be the property of Venezuelans, the property of the Venezuelan people.” Chavez ordered the sacking of all 18,000 PDVSA managers and technicians who had participated in the bosses’ lockout.

With control of PDVSA in its hands, the Chavez government had expropriated the largest piece of property previously under the capitalist class’s control. With the revenues of PDVSA and its logistical resources, the Chavez government has been able to side-step much of the civil service of the old capitalist state, which obstructs the radical pro-working people initiatives of the government.

The US imperialist rulers, through both the Bush and Obama administrations, have since escalated their effort to overthrow Chavez, who is described as the “Leading Anti-US Regional Force” in the US government’s Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community 2009 report. The number of US military bases surrounding Venezuela has expanded from 13 to 20 with seven new bases in Colombia, the US Fourth Fleet of warships has been reactivated to patrol the Caribbean and US funding of opposition groups in Venezuela has reached US$15 million a year.

In the face of continued US threats, Chavez commemorated the anniversary of the revolution on April 13 by swearing 34,000 people into the battalions of students, farmers’ and workers’ militia. “I am very proud that there are a lot of women among the ranks, giving more strength, courage and passion to the task of fighting for the country’s independence and sovereignty” said Chavez. The militia took a pledge to defend Venezuela, “until the final consolidation of the socialist revolution”. According to the Minister of People’s Power for Public Works and Housing, Diosdado Cabello, a total of 120,000 people volunteer in the militia.

While only $40 million was invested in social programs in 1998 according to the minister of finance and planning, Jorge Giordani, with control of PDVSA, the Chavez government has invested $330 billion into its socialist-oriented development measures. The government-funded social missions have led to a significant improvement in living standards. Funding of communal councils has led to the development of a new form of participatory socialist democracy that is taking on increasing responsibilities and displacing the alienating institutions of formal representative democracy, such as local mayors and governors.

On April 16, 2003, social mission Barrio Adentro (“Into the Neighbourhood”) was launched to create a free healthcare system. Since then, the mission has established 6711 clinics in the poor barrios, 503 integral diagnosis centres, 545 integral rehabilitation rooms and 21 high technology centres. Critical to the mission has been the help of over 20,000 Cuban health professionals, who have staffed the clinics while Venezuelans travelled to socialist Cuba for medical training. In December 2011, 8581 Venezuelan doctors from a group of 25,000 studying Integral Communitarian Medicine will graduate and replace the Cuban physicians.