Revolution & Counter Revolution in Venezuela
The Economic War & Mass Media Lies & Deceptions
Alison Bodine
For
17 years Western mainstream capitalist media has carried out a campaign
of lies and deceptions against the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
This constant campaign of manipulation began at the start of the
Bolivarian Revolution, with the election of Comandante Hugo Chavez in
December of 1998. It has not only continued, but grown in the depths of
its lies and open hostility to the Bolvarian Revolution with each gain
made by poor and oppressed people in Venezuela for their sovereignty,
self-determination and a more just and equal society.
Especially over the past six months, major media sources like the New
York Times, the Washington Post and CNN have all published articles,
editorials and reports greatly exaggerating the economic crisis and
painting Venezuela as a state on the verge of complete collapse. A
Washington Post Editorial on April 12, 2016 even went as far as to
declare that “Venezuela is in desperate need of a political
intervention.”
Perfectly in line with this campaign, on July 26, 2016 the National Post
printed a Washington Post article on Venezuela by Latin America
Correspondent Nick Miroff with the headline “’I’ve never been hungry
like this,’” taking a quote from the article by a woman returning home
to Venezuela after purchasing goods in the Colombian border town of
Cucuta. Following this sensationalized headline, the article went on to
explain how “Cucuta, long known as a city of contraband goods, has
suddenly became a lifeline for desperate shoppers in neighboring
Venezuela, and one of the starkest illustrations yet of its panicky,
gnawing hunger” and how “Tens of thousands of Venezuelans…have streamed
across the border for basic goods in recent weeks as their country’s
economy collapses under the weight of the world’s highest inflation rate
and chronic mismanagement, which has produced shortages of everything
from diapers to milk.”
Within this deceptive article, Mr. Miroff has repeated all of the
buzzwords media uses to describe Venezuela today: hunger, shortages,
desperation, chaos, all without bothering to explain how the economic
crisis in Venezuela has developed.
Beyond the vague claim of carefully crafted words like “chronic
mismanagement,” the clearest analysis that the author presents as the
cause of the economic crisis in Venezuela comes from a quote by a, a
retired geology professor who is quoted as saying, simply “This
government has looted our country… And they’re still doing it.” This
quote is then followed by further commentary and anecdotes suggesting
that government subsidies that have given poor and working people in
Venezuela access to food and basic goods at a price they can afford are
in fact the cause of the shortages. In this backward world illustrated
by Mr. Miroff, buying at a low subsidized price and then selling at
enormous profit has become an unavoidable and completely natural human
trait.
Production and Distribution in Venezuela
The main factor that both this article and Western mainstream media has
left out is the role of Venezuela’s capitalist class and their allies in
the U.S. government in perpetuating the economic crisis and instability
in Venezuela. There counter-revolutionary and violent campaign of
economic sabotage, hoarding, price gouging and more is what the
government of Preisdent Nicolas Maduro refers to as an economic war.
When President Hugo Chavez won the 1998 election in Venezuela it marked
the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution that continues on through
today. The Venezuelan government became a government representing the
interests of the vast majority of people in Venezuela, instead of the
select few. Tremendous gains were made for poor, working and oppressed
people, beginning with the adoption of a new constitution ratified by
popular vote that enshrines the basic human rights such as the rights to
food, water, housing, healthcare and education.
The Venezuelan economy, however, continued to be run by the capitalist
class of Venezuela. Although in the last 17 years of the Bolivarian
Revolution, the government has nationalized certain industries, such as
the petroleum industry, the production of food and basic goods in
Venezuela, as well as much of their distribution remains in the hands of
a handful of rich Venezuelans and their international partners. Major
multinational corporations including Kimberly Clark, Bridgestone,
General Mills, and Procter & Gable, McDonalds and many more all
continue to have factories and major stakes in Venezuela. With the power
of production in their hands, these companies, as well as Venezuelan
private industry are doing their best to sabotage the Venezuelan
economy, with absolutely no regard to the well-being of the vast
majority of the people of Venezuela.
One case of this sabotage occurred at the beginning of July, 2016 when a
Kimberly Clark in Aragua, Venezuela, shut-down production and fired
over 900 employees, claiming that they did not have the raw materials to
make their goods. The Venezuelan government investigated and found the
opposite of what the company claimed - the warehouses for this factory
were well-stocked. In response, the government of Venezuela turned the
factory over to the workers to re-open and continue production. As
reported by TeleSUR “The factory can produce, every month, 25 million
diapers, 18 million sanitary napkins and 33 million rolls of toilet
paper”, or about 20% of the national demand for such products in
Venezuela.
The Kimberly Clark factory demonstrates the impact that one private
company can have on the availability of goods in Venezuela, and the same
scenario can be repeated across the food and pharmaceutical industry.
As researched by Pasqualina Curcio, a Venezuelan economist and professor
at Simón BolÃvar University, “Both the production and distribution of
the 10 most difficult foods to purchase, for which there are long queues
(corn flour, rice, pasta, milk, oil, margarine, coffee, chicken, beef
and chicken eggs) are concentrated in no more than 10 large private
companies.” (www.foodfirst.org)
There are many other examples of slowed or stopped production of
processed foods and basic goods, as well as instances of hoarding or
price gouging reported all over the country. For example, nearly 42,000
medicines and 11 tons of food were seized by government operations in
the state of Miranda over a period of about two weeks. These basic goods
were confiscated from “bachaqueros” (criminals in Venezuela that sell
subsidized goods at incredible profit), or from stores and pharmacies
found to be hoarding or breaking price-control laws.
(www.Panorama.com.ve)
Another factor that mainstream media articles never mentions is the
ongoing U.S. economic sanctions against Venezuela. In March of 2016,
U.S. President Barack Obama renewed an Executive Order declaring
Venezuela “an extraordinary threat to U.S. national security,” and
paving the way for the U.S. to continue imposing criminal sanctions on
the country. These sanctions not only have an immediate effect on the
person or business they are targeting, they are also an important
consideration for foreign banks and Venezuela’s debt-holders. As one
consequence of this, on July 11, 2016 Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro announced that Citibank, the bank that Venezuela uses for foreign
currency transactions, had given notice that they would close all the
accounts of the Venezuelan Central Bank and the Bank of Venezuela.
The capitalist class in Venezuela works closely with the U.S. government
and their imperialist allies for the same end-goal – to overthrow the
government of Nicolas Maduro and with it the Bolivarian Revolution and
with it the great gains made for poor, working and oppressed people in
Venezuela.
President Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution Fight Back!
In the face of this economic war, waged by the counter-revolutionary
opposition, the people of Venezuela, led by President Nicolas Maduro
have launched a number of initiatives in order to fight against the
shortages.
This includes various forms of community projects such as the newly
announced “micro-missions.” These projects are focused in six areas,
seed production, animal protein, balanced food, cleaning and personal
hygiene products, as well as the regionalizing of school meal menus and
the supply of essential medicines.
There have also been changes introduced by the government of Venezuela
in order to stop smuggling of goods into neighboring countries, hoarding
and price-gouging. The most recent of these measures is called the
Great Mission of Sovereign Supply. This new mission is run by General
Vladimir Padrino, Venezuela’s Minister of Defence, and will be able to
control the production and distribution of food, medicine and basic
household goods.
If Western media and foreign governments were really concerned about the
humanitarian situation in Venezuela, wouldn’t they applaud measures by
the government of President Nicolas Maduro to cut-down on smuggling or
diversify production? Wouldn’t they celebrate the fact that Venezuela
continues to fund and support community-based farmers markets and
gardens as a way to combat shortages? Instead, they only offer more and
more criticism and more and more so-called evidence about how the
political system that the people of Venezuela have chosen with the
Bolivarian Revolution will never work.
What right does the government of Canada or the United States have to
criticize the methods a foreign government is using to build a more just
and equal society? One only has to look around Vancouver to see
examples of how this political and economic system is failing the people
in Canada. In British Columbia, one in five children live in poverty, a
statistic that hasn’t changed since 2012. A recent report called
Household Food Insecurity in Canada, 2014 by the University of Toronto
research team PROOF found that in 2014, 24 per cent of households in the
Northwest Territories and 47% of households in Nunavut experienced a
form of food insecurity.
Major Media is a Mouthpiece for Foreign Intervention in Venezuela
There is a video of Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton
taken during the December 2015 Parliamentary elections in Venezuela.
Upon discovering that the counter-revolutionary opposition in Venezuela
going to win a majority of the seats in the Parliament she proudly
declares “We’re winning! We’re winning!” to a crowd of supporters.
With these two words, the political support from the U.S. government for
the violent counter-revolutionary opposition in Venezuela is laid-bare.
Recent leaks of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails from her time as U.S.
Secretary of State, have even gone further, revealing covert U.S.
operations in Venezuela and Latin America meant to sew unrest and
instability in the country. The imperialist interests of the government
of the U.S. in Venezuela are the same as the interests of Venezuela’s
capitalist class – to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution.
Politicians like Hillary Clinton leave it up to the military officers
and diplomats to explain more clearly the strategy for achieving their
goal. On October 10, 2015 the former head of US Southern Command General
Jon Kelly, explained to CCN Spanish that that the U.S. would consider
intervening in Venezuela to avert a “humanitarian crisis” involving lack
of food and water.
In this way, mainstream media has been the perfect mouthpiece for this
strategy. With each editorial, article and opinion piece they describe
time and time again the “humanitarian crisis” in Venezuela and the lack
of any government solutions. Having media like this has also enabled the
U.S. government to take a back-seat in an outright campaign against
Venezuela. Secretary of State John Kerry can support dialogue in
Venezuela out of one side of his mouth while on the other he continues
to pressure U.S. allied governments in Latin America to attempt to
isolate Venezuela.
Viva Venezuela!
Every day the people of Venezuela are mobilized on the streets in
defense of the Bolivarian Revolution. Together with President Nicolas
Maduro, the Bolivarian Revolution continues to advance, in the face of a
very real economic crisis, a vicious economic war and threats of
foreign intervention.
As peace-loving people we must take this moment to intensify our
campaign in defense of the people of Venezuela, not only to work to
counter the lies and manipulations of capitalist media, but to actively
and consistently mobilize in opposition to U.S. and foreign intervention
in Venezuela. When the people of Venezuela win a victory against
imperialist domination, and maintain their right to sovereignty and
self-determination it is a victory for poor and oppressed people around
the world.
Let the dogs of the empire bark, that’s their job; ours is to battle to
achieve the true liberation of our people. – Hugo Chavez
U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!
No to U.S. Sanctions on Venezuela!
Obama: Revoke the Decree!
Viva Venezuela!
Follow Alison Bodine on Twitter:@Alisoncolette
