News and Analysis
- 31 August 2005
Speaking shortly after a press conference held by President Chavez and U.S. Reverend Jesse Jackson, Ramirez said that CITGO Petroleum Corp., the wholly owned subsidiary of PDVSA, is currently refining up to 664.000 barrels of oil through the refineries it owns and operates in the United States.
Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States. Venezuelan oil accounted for 12% of U.S. oil imports.
Ramirez said that under the Venezuelan government plan, CITGO will set aside up to 10% of its refined oil products to be sold directly to organized poor communities, and institutions in the U.S. without intermediaries.
The plan calls for the sale of heating oil and gasoline to hospitals, nursing homes, schools and organized poor communities in U.S. soil, according to Ramirez.
Other Venezuelan government officials, who asked not to be named, said that Venezuela will not lose any money with this program because the idea is to "cut the middle-man", the intermediaries.
Ramirez said the beneficiaries will see a price reduction of about 30%.
Ramirez, who is also Venezuela's Minister of Oil and Energy, denied that Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition would be the recipient of the cheaper oil.
The Minister said Reverend Jackson's organization could help Venezuela identify those who are in need, but that they will not be the recipients of the products.
Ramirez was confident the program will be implemented before the U.S. winter begins.
CITGO Petroleum Corp. owns and operates eight refineries in the United States.
It is unclear how the CITGO gas will reach the consumers, as CITGO does not own any of the 14.000 CITGO-branded gas stations operating in U.S. territory through franchising.
"Impact on seven to eight million persons"
“There is a lot of poverty in the U.S. and I don’t believe that reflects the American Way of Life. Many people die of cold in the winter. Many die of heat in the summer,” said Chavez on Sunday during his weekly TV show, explaining why Venezuela was interested in providing discounted heating oil to the U.S. poor.
“We could have an impact on seven to eight million persons,” Chavez added.
Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, had told Chavez that the embassy in Washington DC has already received over 140 requests about the plan, even though it has not been formally announced yet.
Venezuela also plans to provide free surgery for certain eye conditions for U.S. poor.
- 02 September 2005
Venezuela was the first country to offer help to the United States in dealing with the effects of Hurricane Katrina. On Wednesday, August 31st, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuelan state-owned CITGO Petroleum Corporation had already pledged US$1 million for hurricane aid. "It's a terrible tragedy that our North American brothers are living through," Chavez said. "We have a battalion from our Simon Bolivar humanitarian team ready in case they authorize it for us to go there, if they give us the green light." He offered humanitarian workers and fuel to help. "We are willing to donate fuel for hospitals, for public transport, everything we can do," Chavez said.
But at the same time Hugo Chavez sharply criticised US president G W Bush for his handling of the Hurricane crisis. "As more information comes out now, a terrible truth is becoming evident: That government doesn't have evacuation plans," Chavez said. Putting words to what many in the US must be thinking, he added that Bush, "there at his ranch, said nothing more than 'you need to flee'; he didn't even say how - in cowboy style." He also pointed out that the lack of a clear strategy on the part of the government hit the poorest sections of the population hardest. "We all saw the long lines of desperate people leaving that city in vehicles, those who had vehicles," he said, noting that the areas worst affected are amongst "some of the poorest in the United States, most of them black."
In contrast with the lack of action on the part of the US government, the Venezuelan government was able to help hundreds of Lousiana residents. CITGO, a company in the US owned by the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA, has a network of refineries and gas stations in the United States. One of these is based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and was opened to give shelter and aid to some 2,000 residents of the area.
Felix Rodriguez, the president of both PDVSA and CITGO who was visiting the Lake Charles refinery, said that the funds from their donation would be directed to aid organizations in affected areas.
According to Venezuelanalaysis.com, sources at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC said that "apart from the million dollars in monetary assistance, Venezuela is offering two mobile hospital units, each capable of assisting 150 people, 120 specialists in rescue operations, 10 water purifying plants, 18 electricity generators of 850 KW each, 20 tons of bottled water, and 50 tons of canned food."
In his statement Chavez also noted the contrast between the way Cuba and the US deal with these kinds of natural catastrophes. Here we can see again the advantages of a system where the private profit motive was abolished after the 1959 revolution. While there are very few victims of hurricanes in Cuba, and the contingency plans are properly organised, in the most powerful capitalist nation on earth, thousands die, most of whom could be alive today if the necessary measures had been taken.
Chavez further made the link between the fierceness and frequency of recent hurricanes and global warming, for which he blamed capitalism and criticised the US for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases.
Not surprisingly, coverage of this offer for help from Venezuela was very scarce or non existent in the US media. The only reaction from the US administration was from an unnamed "senior State official" quoted in the Washington Times as saying that “he was not aware of Caracas' proposal” but noted that “unsolicited offers can be counterproductive." The Bush administration cannot really accept this offer for help which would destroy the image they are trying to create of Chavez as an evil dictator.
Venezuela's offer comes a week after the statements by right wing fundamentalist preacher Pat Robertson, who said on his TV station that Chavez should be assassinated. The Bush administration has so far not condemned this statement and not taken any legal measures against Pat Robertson. The furthest they went was when Rumsfeld said that he did not agree with the declarations of Robertson, but that any private individual is free to say whatever he wants.
In the last week, Venezuela has also offered cheap gas and fuel to poor communities in the US, the hardest hit by the recent increases in the price of oil. "We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States". Chavez explained that the exorbitant price of oil is mainly caused by speculation on the part of the multinationals and intermediaries, and that if these were cut out, prices would be much cheaper. He explained how in Venezuela gas is even cheaper than bottled water and that Venezuelans can fill their tank for about $2. According to the Venezuelan Embassy in the US, more than 1400 organisations (churches, charities, counties, hospitals) have already contacted them to enquire about the details of the offer.
This is not the only offer that revolutionary Venezuela has made to the United States people. When Chavez attended the graduation of the first promotion of the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba (ELAM), he also offered to bring tens of thousands of US citizens to Cuba to be operated on their cataracts, extending the "Mision Milagro", which has been dealing with Venezuelan patients, to a 150,000 poor US-Americans a year. The offer was also to train thousands of doctors at this ELAM school. "We are deeply concerned about the poverty which is increasing in the United States," Chavez said.
The attitude of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez towards the US is thus very clear and has been so from the very beginning of the Bolivarian revolution: opposition to imperialism and the attempts of the US administration to overthrow the democratically elected government in Venezuela, while at the same time solidarity and links with ordinary working people in the United States.
These offers of help also expose the inability of capitalism in the US to provide the basics for their own population: health care for all, relief in case of emergency, cheap fuel for heating in the winter, etc. This is a further argument against those who say that the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela must proceed cautiously, not to provoke imperialism, etc. In fact the best defence against imperialism is taking measures like these which will show ordinary working people in the United States what can be done and will make them think what kind of government they would rather have: one that puts war and private profit before peoples' basic needs, or one that invests the country's natural resources to improve peoples' lives.
This example would be even more powerful if the Venezuelan revolution were completed and the whole of the economy put under the democratic control of the workers, the only way in which the Bolivarian revolution can succeed.
- 31 August 2005
Chavez made these comments during his weekly television program today, which Jackson briefly attended to speak to Chavez and the audience. Jackson is on a three-day visit to Venezuela, during which he will meet with local religious leaders, Afro-Venezuelan groups, the president of the state oil company PDVSA, President Hugo Chavez, and visit poor-neighborhoods to see Venezuela's social programs at work.
Chavez had first mentioned the plan to supply discounted oil to poor communities in the U.S. last week, while in Cuba, but did not provide any details beyond that. Today he specified that it was heating oil that the Venezuelan government was looking into because this seemed the most feasible and most necessary approach. Given the high price of oil this year, heating oil is expected to reach very high levels this winter, which will be unaffordable for many poor families in the U.S.
“There is a lot of poverty in the U.S. and don’t believe that everything reflects the . Many people die of cold in the winter. Many die of heat in the summer,” said Chavez in explaining why Venezuela was interested in providing discounted heating oil to the U.S. poor. “We could have an impact on seven to eight million persons,” he added.
Chavez said that he was interested in talking to Jackson about this plan, so that his organization and other U.S.-based groups might help with it. Chavez mentioned the groups TransAfrica Forum, Global Exchange, and Global Women’s Strike that could also help implement the plan.
Part of the plan was for the U.S.-based and Venezuelan state-owned oil company Citgo to provide heating oil directly to poor households. Chavez said this would not present a loss to Venezuela because the idea would be to offer the oil at a lower rate because intermediaries would not be involved. Up to 30% to 40% of the cost could be saved said Chavez. Citgo licenses 14,000 gas station franchises and 8 refineries in the U.S.
Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, had told Chavez that the embassy has already received over 140 requests about the plan, even though it has not been formally announced yet.
Free Eye Operations
Chavez spent a large part of his Sunday talk show discussing new healthcare plans for Venezuela. Part of this discussion also involved the provision of free eye operations to people in all of the American continents, north and south. The operations Cuba would provide the bulk of the operations, with Venezuela providing the transportation.
Chavez said that of the six million operations that Cuba and Venezuela would want to organize over the next ten years, there would be slots for 150,000 U.S.-Americans per year. Each country will receive a quota. Chavez gave some examples, explaining that there would be 100,000 for Brazilians, 60,000 for Colombians, 12,000 for Panamanians, 30,000 for Ecuadorians, 20,000 for Bolivians, and 20,000 for inhabitants of the Caribbean. Chavez said that those interested in the eye operations should turn to the Venezuelan embassies in their respective countries.
The plan to provide free eye operations is part of the “Mission Miracle,” which is one of the many new social programs that Chavez government has instituted in the past two years in Venezuela. By the end of December, 150,000 Venezuelans will have received eye operations. These operations involved operations for cataracts, myopia, pigmentary retinosis, and many others.- 02 August 2005
Signatories unions included the Teamsters, Teamsters Black Caucus, Carpenters Union, Millwrights, AFSCME (government workers,) Machinists, United Auto Workers, IURE, IBEW (electricians,) SEIU, Bloomington Federation of Teachers, NAL-CBR, BLET, NWU/UAW, AFT (teachers,) and the Chicago NEA (teachers.) Also signing the appeal were members of the IWW, Mexico Solidarity Network, Wellstone Action, Nicaragua Solidarity, and the Circle Bolivariana Cincinnati.
The starting rally at Chicago's Navy Pier began with speeches by former San Francisco Plumbers Union president Fred Hirsch, a long-time Latin American solidarity supporter, and represenatives of Chicago's Latin American Solidarity Center, which organized the day's events. The rally at Navy Pier also featured a Latin activist/singer. The loud and boisterous rally gained the attention and ear of many passers-by, headed to the downtown beach and recreation spot on the hottest ever recorded day in the city.
The rally then formed a column and marched to the downtown Chicago Sheraton Hotel, where the AFL-CIO convention was being held. The marchers shouted slogans such as "CIA, NED - Hands off Venezuela!" and "CIA, NED - they're the same! The only difference is the name!" The marchers then rallied in a plaza next to the hotel, where speakers from the Columbia Action Network and the Cincinnati Bolivarian Circle took the stage. Although turnout for the rally was much lower than expected, the grievances and demands of the demonstrators came out loud and clear.
On assuming office, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney had pledged to put an end to the Meaneyite "cold warrior" policies of the past, where the AFL-CIO had actively financed and supported US foreign policy and CIA activities abroad. To this aim, the "Solidarity Center" was created, ostensibly to support workers rights to organize in Latin America, Asia and Africa. However while using the language of solidarity, the AFL-CIO's activities abroad speak more of imperialism. "Solidarity Center" has provided the National Endowment for Democracy (NED,) the de facto political arm of the CIA internationally, with huge amounts of money and 'activists' to provide labor-cover for its activities. "Solidarity Center," along with the NED have offices in cities around the world, including Caracas. The NED has spent over $900,000 to support the corrupt opposition in Venezuela since 2001. In 2002, the "Solidarity Center" sent at least $150,000 to coup plotter Carlos Ortega's CTV "union" in Venezuela. These policies run completely counter to the interests of American workers and their brothers and sisters around the world. Working people need real solidarity, not the NED-style "democracy" of the likes of Pedro Carmona, Augusto Pinochet and George W. Bush!
*Shut down "Solidarity House!"
*Defend the Venezuelan Revolution - for genuine Solidarity and Internationalism!
- 18 July 2005
The recent endorsement of Hands Off Venezuela by the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) will certainly open many doors for the campaign not just in Alberta, but across Canada. The AFL is the umbrella organization for the Alberta labour movement and represents 31 different unions which account for over 125, 000 workers. At the most recent AFL convention in May 2005, a resolution was passed that voiced support for the reforms of the Chavez government. Young representatives of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign, from the New Democratic Youth of Alberta and the AFL Youth Committee further campaigned for the AFL to support HOV, resulting in an endorsement and donation not more than a week ago.
The campaign has been steadily gaining support in Alberta and the affiliations of the AFL and the Edmonton and District Labour Council have meant that HOV has reached many union locals that we were not previously in contact with. We have already received a significant donation and affiliation from the Edmonton Ironworkers local 720 as a result of the AFL and EDLC’s support. These affiliations and donations are making it possible for us to begin building a strong Canadian section of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign during this critical time for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
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- 18 July 2005
- 17 July 2005
- 13 July 2005
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| Campesinos marched on Venezuela's National Assembly, demanding justice and an end to impunity for assassins of peasant leaders. Credit: ABN |
“Zamora took Caracas” on Monday, as agrarian workers affiliated with the National Agrarian Coordinator Ezequiel Zamora (CANEZ)—named after the 19th Century hero of Venezuelan peasants—marched through the city demanding an end to the assassination of land reform leaders. Over 6,000 Venezuelan campesinos congregated outside the National Assembly, and later, outside of the Attorney General’s office to demand an end to impunity for those responsible for over 130 assassinations.
Since the Venezuelan government passed a controversial land reform law in 2001, conflicts between land reform activists and land-owners have resulted in at least 150 assassinations of campesinos, and possibly more. Since January, 2005 when the land reform initiative was given a new push by President Hugo Chávez, violence in the countryside has escalated further.
Claudia Jardim, a journalist who produces a special bi-monthly documentary on the country’s land reform process says the political murder-rate in the countryside has jumped to an estimated one peasant leader per week since January.
Campesinos marching on the National Assembly and Attorney General’s office submitted a document listing a series of demands to secure government protection for those on the frontlines of the land reform and to seek an end to impunity for the material and intellectual authors of the assassinations.
Specifically, their demands included the establishment of a series of special prosecutors to be assigned to the states that have witnessed the most serious levels of violence over the past few years.
The CANEZ also submitted a document to the Attorney General complete with evidence linking specific latifundistas—landowners—to the violence. Campesino leader and recent victim of an attempted assassination, Braulio Alvarez, was on hand during the protest and afterwards, where he was interviewed on state television channel 8. According to Alvarez, some of the richest landowning families in Zulia, Cojedes and Yaracuy (see map) are responsible for contracting killers to rid them of bothersome peasant leaders.
A Worrisome Trend
But according to peasant activists, every agricultural state has seen the use of hired-killers, known as sicarios, against peasant leaders pushing for land reform. In addition to the three states mentioned above, Lara, Guarico, Barinas, and Portuguesa have also seen violence directed against campesino movements, including the use of sicarios.
Marino Alvarado, Defense Coordinator for Venezuelan human rights group Provea told Venezuelanalysis.com that “Campesinos have been the targets of assassination in Venezuela for decades.” Nor is the problem of hired-killers, the “sicariato,” anything new in Venezuela, according to Alvarado. “Perhaps what is new is that the phenomenon has increased considerably,” he says. “Since 2000, the number of campesinos assassinated has increased rapidly, under specific conditions suggesting the involvement of sicarios, hired-assassins… Today, the sicariato is a problem nationwide, though it remains very much concentrated in the frontier.”
“What has changed of late,” explains Alvarado, “is that sicarios have been increasing the number of victims, and they have been widening their reach. In the past, sicarios tended to kill those linked to illicit activities, drugs, corruption, and so forth. Later this was extended to incorporate political activists, whether related to land reform, human rights, or community politics.” Over the past five years the sicario has been “diversifying his victims, and he has become more sophisticated in his methods.”
The state launched an ambitious land reform, argues journalist Jardim, without sufficiently advancing a strategy for protecting peasant leaders from the entirely predictable violent reaction of the landowning class.
From the Military to the Hired Assassin
For Alvarado, the sicariato represents another important development, and that is in the transition from the use of state sponsored repression, to the use of private killers. Since the Chávez government came to power in 1998, says Alvarado, repression in the countryside has largely been at the hands of private forces, forces outside the state police and military apparatus. 2005 may become the exception, he warns, noting that two peasant activists have already been killed by the Armed Forces.
In the past, the Venezuelan Army, the National Guard, as well as regional police forces were regularly implicated in killings of peasant activists and leaders. One infamous example was the 1988 Amaparo massacre, in which 14 “guerillas” were killed “in battle” by the Venezuelan military. As it turned out, the alleged ELN Colombian guerillas were in fact Venezuelan peasants on a fishing expedition. The military planted weapons on them and ELN insignia, then hastily buried the bodies without the required autopsy.
Since the Chávez government has redefined the role of the Venezuelan military, and radically challenged existing power relations in the Venezuelan countryside, landowners looking for retribution against peasant groups have turned to the sicario, the hired-killer to play the repressive role in rural areas that the military has largely abandoned.
Looking for Justice
The problem, says Ezequiel Zamora Front leader Domingo Santana, is the “situation of abandonment that peasants inhabiting frontier zones—especially in Apure—are currently living.”
“The most worrisome aspect of this entire issue,” says Provea Defense director Marino Alvarado, “is that the sicariato continues killing unpunished.” “That is not to say that sicarios enjoy special protection or impunity,” says Alvarado. In fact, they enjoy the same benefits of everyday murderers: a Justice system that is incapable or unwilling to adequately investigate these crimes and bring killers to justice.
With this impunity, warns Alvarado, the sicariato has been evolving into a truly developed class of professional killers, no longer restricted to operating in the frontier regions, but now essentially free to operate throughout the country, including Caracas. Alvarado suspects that the car-bomb assassination of Public Prosecutor Danilo Anderson in November, 2004 was at the hands of sicarios—perhaps the same ones operating in the countryside.
CANEZ and other land reform groups have repeatedly suspected specific landowners in the assassinations of their leaders. Often, the links appear clear, at least to the campesino groups in question: land reform activists occupy land for which they have legal title; they come into conflict with neighboring landowners who have illegal claim to the land; masked killers surprise the group’s leaders and kill them.
As a human rights group, Provea cannot say that landowners are clearly responsible for the killings of peasant leaders, says Alvarado. “We do not have the proof that unquestionably links these landowners to the killings of peasants…It is not for us to accuse, that is the job of the Attorney General’s office…Nonetheless, it is presumed that in at least some of the cases, some of the people involved were contracted by landowners.”
This view has been widely corroborated by other human rights groups in the country. Last April a group calling itself the Forum for Life, which brought together the most active and widely respected human rights groups in the country, issued a communiqué to the Venezuelan government, demanding that the state take a clear proactive role in protecting the lives of peasant leaders against assassination.
“The frequency with which in the past few years, activists and leaders of the campesino movement have been assassinated represents a grave situation that obligates the national government to present a prompt and fitting response,” reads the opening sentence of the report. “The occurrences of violent acts in the Venezuelan countryside reflect the inadequacy of current security policies and evidence the state’s responsibility, due to omission. Though high-level government officials have expressed their preoccupation with these events, mere declarations have proven insufficient. What is required is a policy that facilitates investigations, guarantees the protection of campesinos and their leaders and, in general, the improvement of citizens’ security in the countryside.”
A Quick Response
Peasant leaders and activists marching on the capital on Monday were met by an impressive array of high-level government leaders. At the National Assembly (AN), First Vice-President Ricardo Gutiérrez spoke to the crowd overflowing into the AN’s gardens and the streets outside, announcing the establishment of a special commission to discuss and respond to the principal problems of Venezuelan peasants. Gutiérrez is currently leading a commission investigating the assassinations of and aggressions against peasant and indigenous leaders and activists.
Peasant movements will select 15 representatives to join the commission, which will visit the states in which sicarios have threatened to halt the land reform process now fully underway. “We know you are here calling for justice,” Gutiérrez told the crowd of around 6,000. “We will pressure the public institutions to do justice.”
Minister of Agriculture and Land, Antonio Albarrán, also addressed the crowd that came to Caracas from all over the country. Albarrán announced the creation of a sub-commission to be presided by Alcides Rondón, Vice-Minister of Citizen Security of the Ministry of Justice and the Interior. The sub-commission led by Rondón will also investigate the assassinations as well as formulate preventative policies designed to improve security in the Venezuelan countryside.
Albarrán added that representatives from peasant groups and from the Attorney General’s office would be incorporated into Regional Councils previously established to address rural and land reform issues.
CANEZ leaders were also received by representatives of the Venezuelan executive at the Presidential Palace Miraflores. In a Monday night press conference Information Minister Andrés Izarra said the issue is of the utmost interest to the President, and should involve the cooperation and dedication of all relevant ministries.
Whether these responses will have the desired effect remains to be seen. Organizers of the march stated that the “in the face of repeated assassinations, the alternative is to deepen the agrarian revolution, continue the expropriations according to the Land Law, mobilize the masses of campesinos, and secure decisive action by the Armed Forces against the guilty parties.”
But a resolution to the crisis in the countryside is likely far away. The power struggle unleashed with the 2001 Land Law was widely considered to be a major motivation for the anti-Chávez opposition’s coup attempt in April, 2002, and it continues to be violently contested by landed interests in rural Venezuela.
As evidenced by recent events, most notably the extra-judicial killings of an estimated 200 people over the past several years in the state of Guarico in which the Governor has been implicated, and the similar killings of three students two weeks ago in a Caracas neighborhood, the Venezuelan security apparatus is in need of complete overhaul. While such an overhaul has recently begun, it will have to prove to be sufficiently profound for it to make a difference.
There is a culture of violence intrinsic in Venezuela’s police institutions in particular, but also including the military, which is by no means specific to Venezuela. Police and military in Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina have all been implicated in horrible massacres over the past few years. According to New York University historian Greg Grandin, this culture of violence is a legacy of Cold War state terrorism, one that many critics charge was bred by the infamous U.S. School of the Americas to which Latin America’s most notorious dictators sent their officers for training in “interrogation techniques,” among other hallmarks of “modern counterinsurgency.” Replacing such a culture of violence with a mission to protect Venezuelan citizens goes further than merely neutering the military and police’s repressive capacity; it also means ending the impunity of Venezuelan criminals, whether their crimes are politically motivated or not.- 07 July 2005
At the end of June 2005, Ruben Linares was in Britain. Jorge Martin interviewed him for Hands Off Venezuela.
Jorge Martin: Can you tell us who you are and why you came to Britain?
I am Ruben Dario Linares Silva, member of the National Coordination of the UNT [National Workers Union] and vice-president of the United Transport Federation in Venezuela. I am in England thanks to an invitation from the RMT to attend their congress and so that I can have personal contact with trade unionists and explain the revolutionary process in Venezuela: what is the situation of the workers, what do we want, what do we hope for.
You should know that the workers of Venezuela and the people as a whole are participating in a process of change, we have been deeply affected by capitalism which is the cause of all the evils inflicted on our peoples, and now we are on the way towards socialism. US imperialism with Bush and the State Department will not be able to impose their will on us. We will defend ourselves as we have done so far, with all the legal weapons in our hands, like the constitution, looking for support from world public opinion, but if they at any time invade us we will respond in the same way, a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye. They should not think that if they try to invade Venezuela they will be able to leave unharmed, the answer would be much worse than the one Iraq is giving to the Empire right now.
JM What can you tell us about the experiences of workers' participation in the management of publicly owned companies and of the nationalisation under workers' control of companies that went bankrupt?
RL We are refounding the whole of the trade union movement, building it anew. What we are raising is co-management both in the state owned and in the private sector. In the private sector, let's be clear, when a company owner tries to close it down we say: "any factory that is closed should be taken over" and we discuss the possibility of reopening it with the help of the state in order to guarantee jobs and also production so that the country goes forward. We are also raising the issue of co-management in the private sector. If a private company receives a loan from the state, we raise the need for co-management, so that we can guarantee jobs and better production. And in the state owned sector we are clearly saying that all state owned basic industries should be under co-management. Co-management from the point of view of the workers is something very simple: we want power and participation in the management of the companies, in order to create new jobs, guarantee that the wealth reaches the people and that corruption is rooted out.
We must say it clearly, during the stoppage and sabotage of December 2002 and January 2003, there was workers' control in the two most important state owned companies. In the [oil company] PDVSA there was workers' control. It was us, the workers, who restarted production in the company after the managers had left, and we did so without managers. In the case of [electricity generator and supplier] CADAFE the workers guaranteed the supply of electricity throughout the stoppage/sabotage. It was the workers who did it; there was real workers' control. This is what we want with co-management. We have all the rights, to elect the managers, look into the accounts, to make proposals; the workers have all the rights. This is what we are demanding in an audacious way and we think this is the way forward.
JM Hugo Chavez has said that within the limits of capitalism the problems of misery suffered by the Venezuelan people cannot be solved and that we must go towards socialism, how to you see this from the point of view of the UNT?
RL The way is socialism. This is the way that we must discuss all the different opinions on socialism, and how in Venezuela we are going to implement it according to our reality. We are in complete agreement with what the president said. Through debates and discussions we will reach a definition of what we need in order to implement socialism in Venezuela.
JM What are the main threats facing the Bolivarian Revolution right now?
RL The Empire has many problems. We have told the US that we have a trade relationship with them: we sell them oil and they buy it at whatever price is fixed by the market. But the US government has always believed that Latin America is their backyard where they can do whatever they want and as they please: install governments, remove presidents, grab all of our natural resources and take them to their country, add value to them and then sell them back to us at 50 or 100 times their original price, to exploit us ... With very few exceptions, the natural wealth of our countries belong to the country as long as they are underground, but from the moment they come to the surface they become US owned, because of capitalist aggression.
JM I also wanted to ask you, what do you think of the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign and other solidarity campaigns that have been organised internationally to defend the Bolivarian revolution? What would you say to these activists?
RL Please continue your work. We cannot deal with the mass media on our own. The main news agencies in the world are in the private sector. They do not like what is happening in Venezuela and therefore they do not tell the truth. The only chance we have of getting the truth out is through the alternative media, and also through the Hands Off Venezuela campaign and other bodies that are organising support and telling people in Europe what is really happening in Venezuela.
JM What would be your message to British workers?
RL The main thing is that the struggle against privatisation here in England must be conducted in a radical way. The people must be made to understand and feel the problem. Only with the support of the people can we stop privatisation. English people should be aware that these famous policies of privatisation, that carry the trade mark of Thatcher, are being defeated in Latin America. In Venezuela there are no more privatisations and the other countries are also resisting them. In Peru we stopped the privatisation of electricity. In the case of Bolivia, the Aymara, Quechua and Guarani Indigenous people, which represent 82% of the population, are fighting for the renationalisation of industries against the private sector. In Argentina it has been proven that the capitalist system and its highest expression, this aberration called privatisation, are starving the people. And this is the case in the whole of Latin America. In Mexico we have the example of the electricity workers who are confronting [president] Fox, almost in a violent way one could say, to prevent privatisation.
JM Is there anything else you would like to add?
RL Yes, I would like to make a personal comment. Those of us who have always been left-wing in Latin America and in Venezuela, we recognise the role of Hugo Chavez. Cuba resisted for 40 years on her own, and with Hugo Chavez the revolution has become a Latin American revolution. It is still in its infancy, but it will bear fruit. Many of us who are over 50 years of age, we always dreamt of being able to confront the Empire in a successful way, and we thought we would never see it. Now, for many, the very fact that we are confronting it with success means that we must continue fighting on, in order to achieve the best for our peoples in Latin America. Paraphrasing Che Guevara I would say: "let those who are born know and let those who are yet to be born know, that the workers of the world are on struggle, and we struggle to win, not to be defeated". This is what I think lies in the future: we will work hard to achieve these aims.
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