To this end, Washington has imposed draconian sanctions to force regime change, resulting in the drastic impoverishment of the Venezuelan masses and an estimated 100,000 deaths due to the cutoff of medical supplies and other vital necessities. Maduro’s bourgeois-nationalist government has been unable to offer a progressive way out of this crisis, even as it seeks a better negotiating position with the US.
Unable to appeal to the working class, which has increasingly turned against the Chavista regime, Maduro has reinforced his alleged “military-police-popular alliance” and increased its repressive nature. According to the government itself, some 2,400 Venezuelans have been arrested in protests that erupted after the election. And, since August 8, X/Twitter has been blocked as part of the Maduro government’s crusade against “hate campaigns” on social media.
In the Chavista-controlled National Assembly, a bill is being discussed to regulate social networks and another against “fascism, neo-fascism, and similar expressions” that could lead to the banning of parties that “incite fascism.” As happens all over the world, bills like these can be utilized to attack the working class fighting against capitalism, with the Chavista regime painting all opposition as fascistic.
The allegations of political repression and persecution go beyond the US-backed opposition and include militant workers and sectors that have broken with Chavismo, such as the Stalinist Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). In August of last year, the Chavista regime virtually outlawed the PCV and prevented it from running candidates in this year’s presidential election.
On August 13, the PCV and its Popular Democratic Front drew attention in a statement to the “massive, popular and spontaneous mobilization of indignation over the announced results” that gave Maduro the victory and charged that “The massive violence against the popular sectors is accompanied by permanent threats, incitement to hatred and the execution of practices of selective violence against different sectors of the political opposition.”
The crisis in Venezuela will undoubtedly escalate in the coming weeks and months. There are more and more warnings that country could confront civil war or even a “pro-democracy” foreign military intervention.
Whatever happens, the Lula and Petro governments are already exposed as key players in the efforts of US imperialism and the right-wing Venezuelan opposition that it sponsors to remove Chavismo from power. The illusion promoted by these governments that the crisis in Venezuela can be resolved at the negotiating table represent a cover for the decades-long regime change operations of the Venezuelan opposition and US imperialism as they buy time to discredit the Maduro government and advance their strategy.
As the WSWS wrote in its August 2 Perspective, the July 28 election “was illegitimate from the outset, the product not of any demand by the Venezuelan people, but of closed-door talks between Caracas and Washington’s lackeys in Barbados.” Therefore, the demand that the local polling results be made public, made by the imperialist powers, the governments of the “Pink Tide,” and much of the international pseudo-left, offers no real alternative and will serve only the interests of Washington and Venezuela’s far-right opposition.
The only alternative for Venezuela’s working class against the threat of war and fascism is to mobilize its own strength independently from all factions of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, including chavismo and its satellites, and to forge its unity with the Latin American and world working class in the struggle for international socialism.
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Publish date : 2024-08-23 13:29:00
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