Tagged with Nicolás Maduro

South American Left united as US aims for regime change in Venezuela

Yankees go homeOn 9 March, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order declaring “a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela” and imposed a further round of sanctions on the South American country.

Following the introduction of sanctions earlier in the year and numerous hostile statements from leading figures in the US administration, including John Kerry and Joe Biden, this latest act of aggression has sent out a clear signal that the US has prioritised the overthrow of the elected government.

It is also remarkably similar to an order signed by Ronald Reagan in 1985 against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which added presidential authority to the destabilisation of a country which at the time — like Venezuela today — was trying to build a different type of society. Continue reading →

The violence in Venezuela is no popular uprising

Venezuela solidarityWhat’s really behind the violence in Venezuela? Attempts to portray the violence as a people’s uprising for justice — a “Venezuelan spring” — don’t stand up to scrutiny. The election of Hugo Chavez delivered the huge increases in living standards, opportunities and the end to foreign dominance that the “Middle Eastern springs” had aimed to achieve.

The “crisis” narrative which is being propagated by some media outlets, a narrative which maintains that the majority of Venezuelans are rising up against intolerable living conditions, is an inaccurate one. The protests are localised. The sectors mobilising are not Venezuela’s poor majority but are from the wealthier opposition strongholds. Just 2,000 are estimated to be involved in violent efforts to bring down the government. And despite current difficulties with high inflation, growth continued in 2013. Poverty and unemployment fell thanks to government action to defend the majority and not punish the poorest. Continue reading →

Up Close in Race to Replace Chávez

Although a reasonably frequent visitor to Cuba, this trip, as part of the Acompañamiento Internacional team of election monitors, was my first to the Latin American mainland.Driving into town from Caracas Airport two points struck me:

First, the barrios, the working class quarters, perched precariously on the hillsides sloping upwards from the plain of Caracas city centre really do look so much like rookeries, as working class homes in Victorian London were known. Continue reading →