Venezuela

by PETER LACKOWSKi Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair This January I went to Venezuela with a group of North Americans to see for ourselves how economic “sanctions” are affecting people’s access to food. We wondered how the Venezuelan popular classes are responding to the massive attack on their economic well-being. We saw a complicated scene, with virtually every kind of productive activity crippled in many ways, some not so obvious on the surface. Nevertheless, people have had time to adjust to the situation; they have been creative, energetic, and determined. Communes are growing, the government is surviving, and “It’s not as bad as it was in 2017” was a common refrain. These are some of the stories we heard as we met people working to achieve food sovereignty for their c...

By Lauren Smith Global Research, On February 11th, four American peace activists, known as the Embassy Protectors Collective, will be tried before the U.S. empire for “interfering with certain protective functions” of its Federal government for their occupation of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C. to prevent it from being handed over to coup leaders sponsored by the Trump administration. Their occupation ended on May 16, 2019, when federal agents broke into the sealed embassy, against international law, and arrested them in a swat style raid. The government’s accusation against them is merely a pretext used for their arrest and prosecution, since they haven’t broken any laws. Matter of fact, their true crime in the minds of the Trump administration is just the...

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Ociel Lopez looks back at 2019 and the radically reversed fortunes of Juan Guaido and Nicolas Maduro. By Prof. Ociel Alí López For Venezuelans, the start of 2019 was perhaps the tensest moment in the past seventeen years. Unlike the political violence of 2017 and the electoral abstention drama of 2018, we faced a real scenario of foreign military intervention in Venezuela. And for the first time, Washington’s long repeated threats to use military force, like in Iraq, Libya, Panama, etc., appeared credible. As the year wore on, the errors and miscalculations implicit in the US strategy became increasingly evident. A “parallel government” headed by Juan Guaido was created, but it had minimal capacity to shape events inside the country, let al...

by MARIA PAEZ VICTOR Photograph Source: Zlatica Hoke – Public Domain “The Indian is good for nothing. But he represents in Bolivia a living force, a mass of passive resistance, a concrete tumor in the entrails of the social organism…The Indian race and the Mestizo caste will have to perish in the struggle for existence.”– Nicodemos Antelo, Bolivian writer, circa 1860 It was a fundraiser for Peruvian sick children. Being at the main table, I was seated – uncomfotably- next to a young man who was the embassy envoy, representing one of the most corrupt governments in the Americas. “But it is for a good cause, I shall behave and talk small talk”, I kept telling myself. My good intentions did not last long. When the music performance was announced I said something to the effect that...