Against the US interventionism supported by Guaido and against all imperialist factors acting in Venezuela.
The XXV Forum
of Sao Paulo (FSP) recently culminated. From its statement, we only agree with
the denunciation and rejection of American interventionism, in all its forms,
but not the unconditional support given to the government of Nicolás Maduro and
to the political leaderships of the Latin American bourgeoisie that have shown
their “short legs” and have even carried out policies against workers and the
people when they have been in government. Of course, we also agree with the
rejection of everything Guaidó represents, as a representative of bourgeois and
imperialist interests in Venezuela, but not because the alternative is a government
like the current one (Maduro-Military-PSUV), authoritarian and destroyer of the
conquests of the Bolivarian revolution and many previous achievements, reaching
further in its austerity measures than neoliberalism, with a sugarcoating of
false leftist and “socialist” language. In addition to all that, it is one of
the most predatory governments of Venezuelan, delivering resources to various
expressions of global capitalism (despite the confrontation with the Trump
administration).
The final declaration of the FSP clearly show the true
interests and priorities of a group of parties, movements and governments that
proclaim themselves progressive and leftist, but whose true character is
portrayed in reality, just by looking at the overwhelming growth of corruption
and the mafia mechanisms of appropriation of income, light years away from the
principles of a real alternative to the prevailing model of world governance.
Throughout the declaration, the top-down and careless vision of the great
problems faced by workers and the people of Latin America is revealed, with
respect to which the polarizing optics is not enough, which resorts exclusively
to pointing out the role of the United States as the economic hegemon in the
world and its condition of capitalist power. The responsibility of FSP members
who are or have been in government is ignored, their responsibility in deepening
the calamities the people of the continent suffer. And more, observing the
direction taken by political leaders that became facilitators of antidemocratic
measures, rapine and the smashing of incipient emancipatory processes lived in
the region throughout the twentieth century and early twenty-first; as is the
role of Maduro and Ortega, for example.
They speak in the abstract of defending
sovereignty, democracy, Human Rights, plurality… when governments like those
mentioned and others, have ended up doing the opposite. It would be necessary
to ask then: how do those who deliver 12% of the national territory to the
mining transnationals in the so-called Orinoco Mining Arc or persist in paying
debt at the expense of the most deprived sectors of society conceive
“sovereignty”? How do those who are part of murky negotiations in Europe or the
Caribbean with the factors they claim to rival and of which we have no idea
what is being discussed or agreed on the backs of the people conceive
“democracy,”? How do they understand the “peace” they proclaim, while the
neighborhoods suffer the onslaught of FAES and murders are committed in
extrajudicial actions? What can they say about Human Rights when in Venezuela
they have eliminated our wages and other work related rights, which are
inherent to life? How can those who defend the perpetuation of single party
regime speak of “plurality” or proclaim “popular activism”
when paramilitary gangs in the service of cliques locked in state structures
are sad fire-fighting protagonists, in the face of genuine population protests,
as seen in Managua or Caracas?
Lula or Cristina Fernández, exalted during the
realization of the event -for the latter a resolution of electoral support in
the coming presidential election in Argentinawas voted- were not and do not
mean a different option that gives possibilities to open a gap of struggle
against the extractivist developmentalist plundering model based on the
appetites of the markets, which has led us to the contamination of rivers,
deforestation, the deep commodification of health and education or the assembly
of hunger labor regimes.
On the
contrary, we say without a doubt that such governments rode on the coattails of
mass movements at a time when there was a willingness to change in most of
South America and once in the government they became bureaucratized and
assimilated to the logic of capital, with its inherent vices and with its way
of doing politics in favor of the –old or new- powerful, betraying the wills of
millions who were committed to moving towards the resolution infinite problems,
caused by historically being the backyard of the United States. They have
already governed, they demonstrated what they are and want to return to power,
but the people should not continue paying the cost of following those
inconsequential and treacherous leaders.
Support for Maduro is one of the most grotesque resolutions
of the Forum, because of the support they offer for such a position,
attributing an assessment of continuity of the so-called Bolivarian revolution
and supposed libertarian deeds in favor of the Venezuelan people, when it is the
expression of a caste that generates a huge rejection in the popular base and
the population as a whole, precisely because of being the dismantlers, not only
of the social and economic conquests that had been achieved in the last 20
years, they have led the country to a total catastrophe, turning the day to day
life of humble families into an endless torture. There is an electrical crisis,
a transportation crisis, a hospital crisis, education has fallen apart…
Maduro and his people let human rights violators like Simonovis escape. It
would not surprise us if that was part of what the government and the opposition
have secretly agreed. Here, a young artist is imprisoned for publishing a few
tweets, such was the case of Karen Palacios. A boy is left blind for claiming
domestic gas with his community. Here, prisoners are tortured and murdered in
their cells, as happened recently with Captain Rafael Acosta Arévalo. Here,
Rodney Alvarez, a worker who has been imprisoned for eight years, part of them
without trial, for a crime he did not commit, just for raising his voice
against union bureaucrats linked to the PSUV. And we only cite some cases to
exemplify.
The “integrationism” of the
“progressive” governments that the FSP raises, though it may express
friction with US imperialism and the search for a more favorable correlation of
forces, really expresses a rearrangement of bureaucratic and neo-bourgeois
factors that aim to continue refining the control and business of the elites
within the framework of geopolitical and inter-imperialist disputes, giving continuity
to the handing over of our resources to corporations, including Chinese and
Russian businesses that have a confrontation against Trump and his gang , which
does not mean that they give way to other ways of addressing the global crisis
of capitalism in favor of the depleted majorities. That is why the FSP greets
the mobilization of the Puerto Rican people almost reluctantly and very
superficially, because they find it inevitable to feel threatened by the
uprising of any people.
It is clear then, that the only alternative we
have for Latin American workers and peoples and around the world, is ourselves,
through our own self-organized and conscious expressions. That is an initial
conclusion that must lead to the construction of our own political tools. We
are not obliged to choose between our executioners. Maduro, Ortega, Cristina
Fernández, Lula, Diaz-Canel… who do not represent real forms of liberation
for their peoples, in front of the typical faces of capital that are shown today
through Donald Trump and his direct servers: Guaidó, Macri, Bolsonaro and all
racist, xenophobic, homophobic and antipopular variants congregated in other
groups such as the Lima Group.
Marea Socialista promotes a different kind of Latin
American integration, based on the energy of the revolutionary mobilization of
workers and people on a continental scale, to achieve the establishment of
governments that respond to our class and not to the dominant and exploitative
social layers. On that basis, our nations will be able to unite and strengthen
themselves to overcome all colonial and semi-colonial submission. We aim at two
fundamental strategies that are: mass mobilization and the construction of
revolutionary parties, the antithesis of bureaucratic spaces such as the FSP.
Our
organization is part of the struggle for full independence and for the free and
self-determined union of peoples, without any ties to the interests or
impositions of imperial powers (traditional and emerging) and global
capitalism. Therefore, in the Venezuelan case, we have supported breaking from
the OAS and ICSID, and all military, political and commercial treaties designed
for American domination and world imperialism over the countries of Latin
America. Hence, we accompanied Chavez’s initiatives to create UNASUR and CELAC,
not subject to the United States, though always warning about their limitations
and inconsistencies, while they were controlled by national bourgeoisie governments
and not by working-class governments. For the same reason, we have pointed out,
when Venezuela entered, the need for a new Mercosur, for the benefit of workers
and peoples, and not for capitalists in the area, without “free trade” treaties
that weaken their sovereignty against Europe or Israel. That is also why we
oppose Colombia’s relations with NATO and, of course, the US bases in its
territory. For our organization, the perspective has to be the free union of
the peoples in federations of socialist and democratic republics by region or
continent, without forgetting the inspiration of what was the Bolivarian Great
Colombia that united several of the liberated nations for a time under the
leadership of Simón Bolívar.
We vigorously fight against all imperialist
intervention and domination, in all fields, and that is why we pronounce
ourselves against the system of domination implanted through the external debt.
We oppose the sacrifice of our people for the payment of a corrupted debt, which
is paid today by both Maduro and Guaidó; the latter through the resources from
Trump´s usurpation of the Venezuelan company CITGO, and that the
self-proclaimed president did not dentine to “humanitarian aid” but to satisfy
international financial capitalists and bondholders. Against this, we have
raised the approach of a public and citizens´ audit of the debt, with
suspension of payments of the illegitimate and fraudulent external debt. And in
this same sense, we have supported the idea of a front of debtor countries to
ignore illegitimate and odious debts.
We condemn the actions of imperialist rapine
carried out by the United States against Venezuela with the approval and
cooperation of the opposition right and the “government” of Guaidó,
which has become a direct instrument of US interests; the seizure of Venezuelan
assets and companies and the so-called economic “sanctions” applied
to Venezuela by imperialism, which are actually genocidal instruments for
intervention and unacceptable mechanisms of pressure and blackmail against the
country. We demand the immediate cessation of these actions and the return of
Venezuelan assets and funds abroad to be used to overcome the crisis. But we do
not validate the manipulation that is done with the excuse of the blockade,
sanctions and economic warfare, to cover the responsibilities of the ruling
bureaucracy in Venezuela about the disasters generated by its policies and the
huge embezzlement of public funds that they have practiced. That is why we
criticize the exercise of a hypocritical “solidarity” that consists
of supporting some elites against others, at the expense of the true interests
of the peoples.
Within our anti-imperialist orientation we have
supported the nationalization of companies and public services in Venezuela,
but under social control and not for the use of the bureaucracy or for its
liquidation and re-privatization once squeezed dry. We are for the annulment of
the Free Trade Agreements (FTA), which accentuate the economic domination of
imperialism and transnational corporations. We also say: Down with the US
blockade of Cuba!, without defending the authoritarian bureaucracy prevailing
on the island. We say: Get the Minustah and its troops out from Haiti! And we
do not turn a blind eye to the participation of Brazil in the time of Lula or
of Argentina in the time of the Kirchners in this mission of UN military
intervention on that Caribbean nation, in which the United States (major
imperialist aggressor), France (former colonizer of Haiti) and Spain (former
colonizer of much of America) stand out. Confronting US imperialism does not
mean we stop opposing the imperialist policies of China and Russia,
particularly committed in Venezuela, to the usufruct of its resources and for
the geopolitical positioning of their governments in Latin America and the
Caribbean.
With this approach, against all imperialisms, for independence and a genuine integration of the oppressed nations, from below and with their peoples, against their elites, their bureaucracies and their bourgeoisies, in revolutionary harmony with the working class worldwide. We are part of the International Socialist League (ISL), of which the MST is also a member in Argentina, in where an important step has been taken for the unity of the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-bureaucratic left, broadening the articulation of the Left and Workers Front (FIT-Unity), which electorally presents other alternatives, such as legislative candidacies, and the presidential formula of Nicolás del Caño and Romina del Plá, against the candidates of the Argentine bourgeoisie and those supported by the parties of the Sao Paulo Forum. We raise alternatives independent of bureaucracies and bourgeoisies around the world, as a task for which we work alongside youth, workers, women, students, farmers… the only way to find the real possibility of a way out of the crisis in favor of our class and not of those who exploit and dominate us. With that call, program and policy, we invite you to make a militant experience together around the construction of Marea Socialista and the ISL.
Marea Socialista