11 de agosto 2024
AA
Share
Along with millions of other leftist activists in the world, the popular Bolivarian Project that Hugo Chavez led filled me with hope. He arrived in government through a clean election in 1998, and once in power had the audacity to push a very advanced Constitution, with emphasis on political, economic, and social democracy. Ample scope was established for citizens’ participation, including the use of plebiscites to revoke mandates, which were put to a popular vote several times, resulting in unquestionable support. Chavez can be criticized for the messianic and personalist turn his leadership took, and for other errors in economic policy, but he can never be accused of stealing elections to maintain himself in power.
Chavez formed part of a rise in progressive forces that came to power democratically. They shared a proposal for profound transformations in a Latin America full of scars and wounds that were still bleeding – the results of interventions both open and covert on the part of the United States, as well as right-wing dictatorships and military governments that had left thousands of people murdered and missing.
The new vision was aimed at transforming a continent suffering from profound social inequalities, with the great majority impoverished by corruption and the looting of our resources. In addition, the region was suffering the effects of neoliberal economic policies that had been imposed like an identical prescription on all our countries, including privatizations, labor deregulation, the tyranny of the marketplace, and the abandonment of social policies.
It’s clear that this project was totally perverted later on. Suffice it to say that the principal intention of the transformation projects – to improve the living conditions of the great majorities and put an end to the inequalities – was abandoned by the new elites and reduced to a vision of power for power’s sake.
This power was then wielded for the benefit of the economic minority’s material interests – those governing and those associated with them. These failures explain the pain of the millions of Venezuelans forced to migrate, the social difficulties of broad sectors inside the country, and the collapse of the Venezuelan economy.
In the end, the leadership of that proclaimed revolution deteriorated into an authoritarian and repressive bureaucracy. Unfortunately, we had already suffered those same vices under the right-wing dictatorships, and also with projects such as Real Socialism (exponentially elevated under Stalin). We experienced it in Nicaragua, seeing the aspirations of the Sandinista Revolution mutate into the pure and harsh Ortega dictatorship. To us, Venezuela is nothing more than another case of a betrayed revolution.
As of today, we Nicaraguans continue living under the burden of a dictatorship that spouts words about anti-imperialism and socialism, but in reality has squashed democracy and the separation of powers, persecuted any and all dissident opinions, and installed a totalitarian, absolutist, Sultanic, and mafia-like system.
After assassinating and imprisoning, they went on to expel not only the political opposition but also social leaders, human rights advocates, independent journalists, religious leaders, feminists, and historic Sandinista leaders. It has stripped many of them of their nationality and maintains a political system so violent as to reach the level of crimes against humanity.
Because of all this, the opening of a possibility for free elections in Venezuela, and the results of such elections, can’t be a matter of indifference to us. We can’t regard it from the cold, intellectual perspective of those who perhaps haven’t suffered so closely the direct ills of dictatorship.
Unfortunately, some of us are now fighting against the second of two dictatorships. Our original struggle was waged with arms in hand when we were merely adolescents, living clandestinely, seeing our sisters raped in the jails, and – in both dictatorships – feeling the grief of so many people killed, unjustly imprisoned, banished and persecuted, sharing the suffering that always vents its fury on the most vulnerable – the poor.
Of course, as in Nicaragua, opposition alternatives from the left are unthinkable in Venezuela. Under both the Ortega and Maduro regimes, the level of persecution is exacerbated in the case of those who come from the original ranks of the revolution, since they expose the reactionary nature of these governments. But those of us from the left who see families torn apart, the homeland pawned, the government and its institutions collapsed, and terror instituted as the daily modus vivendi have no doubts whatsoever – our first step must be putting an end to the dictatorship at any price.
Democracy is like that. Latin American countries have transitioned from progressive governments to neoconservative regimes, as occurred in Brazil with Bolsonaro and currently in Argentina with Millei. But as long as a minimum of respect is maintained for the rules of an imperfect democracy, the challenge is to construct from below an alternative project that can then be submitted to the people’s sovereign determination. Under a dictatorship, however, no matter whether the clamor comes from the left or right, their demands are violated, squelched, perverted. And the elections are stolen.
Nicaragua held presidential elections in November 2021, but before they occurred Ortega jailed all the candidates, outlawed all the independent forces, and with the absolute control he held over all the state powers proclaimed himself the winner of a fourth consecutive term. In Venezuela’s recent elections, even though they were preceded with all the traps that power can set – making them only partially fair elections – people were able to express their will. If Maduro lost, it’s because he reaped the repudiation and disenchantment of the majority of the people. Neither Ortega nor Maduro were victims of imperialist plans.
I won’t deny that the imperialist powers are working every day to serve their own interests. Nor deny that a victory for Edmundo Gonzalez would please right wing governments worldwide. But that’s part of democracy. In the face of the popular will, it’s immoral to continue blaming the mistakes of your own making on external factors, refusing to recognize the true causes behind these defeats.
“Coup d’etat! Coup d’etat!” screamed Ortega as well, to justify the assassination of over three hundred fifty Nicaraguans during the 2018 protests. And that repressive crisis has already resulted in nearly a million people forced into exile.
Citizens popular mobilization can never be termed a Coup!
We have no other choice than to add our voices to the clamor of the Venezuelan people, who from within and outside that country are demanding respect for the results of the July 28th election, with clear verification, as there must be, by counting the voting tally sheets one by one. We must also add our voices to the national and international demand to respect human rights.
End the criminalization of our right to mobilize and protest!
End the detentions and all the repressive measures against people who have mobilized in defense of the popular vote!
Freedom for all the detained, and a peaceful solution to the conflict!
This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by Havana Times. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.
