We Are a Nation of Peace, President Obama

We are publishing here the full text of the statement by the Venezuelan government in response to the provocative declarations of US president Obama in Mexico. We are ready to respond to the call made: "we call all friends of the Venezuelan cause to display the most active solidarity with our people."

I protest to you because I will not allow the government and the rights of Venezuela to be insulted or disregarded. In defending them against Spain, a great part of our population has disappeared and the remaining part longs to deserve the same fate. It is the same for Venezuela to fight against Spain or against the entire world, if the whole world offends it.

Letter of protest from Simón Bolívar to Mr. Irvine,
Agent of the American Government. Angostura,
October 7, 1818

The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela rejects with all the force of its Bolivarian dignity the statements made by the president of the United States, Barack Obama, in Mexico City on May 3, 2013.

Once again, President Obama attacks the legitimate government of Venezuela which was elected on April 14 through a transparent electoral process, whose results were recognized by electoral accompaniers coming from the whole continent and other countries of the world, including the Electoral Mission of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) as well as by all the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean and other continents.

By making statements such as “the people of Venezuela deserve to determine their own destiny free from the kinds of practices that the entire hemisphere generally has moved away from,” President Obama seems to ignore that during 14 years of Bolivarian Government, we the Venezuelan people have adopted an electoral system that stems from a constitutional recognition of the importance of this issue through the creation of a new branch, the Electoral Branch, whose governing body is the National Electoral Council (CNE).

President Obama, please get informed. The CNE has been able to overcome the terrible practices that used to violate people’s will, and that the U.S. supported in order to have governments docile to its mandates. This was attained by establishing an automated voting system in which a voter casts his or her vote through a voting machine that tallies the votes at the end of the process and transmits the results to the CNE counting center. Additionally, a series of audits are carried out before, during and after the electoral process, to guarantee the accuracy of the data shown by the respective ballots.

Similarly, you, President Obama, state that “there are reports indicating that basic principles of human rights, democracy, press freedom and freedom of assembly are not observed in Venezuela.” Although we are no longer surprised by such unfounded statements, we are obliged to respond with what the rest of the hemisphere already knows, which is that human rights are totally and absolutely respected in Venezuela, since the moment Commander Hugo Chávez assumed leadership of the Venezuelan State and proposed the composition of a new constitution possesses the most advanced catalog of human rights in the whole region.

Since then, we have created several institutions to ensure respect for and greater access to human rights and new public policies that today allow all people living in this dignified country to have more and better guarantees regarding access to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, as well as to the collective rights of our peoples.

President Obama, the people of Venezuela fully exercise many rights and freedoms that U.S. society is still a long way from reaching.

Finally, it is a source of outrage for the Venezuelan people, and especially the families of those who died on April 15, 2013, that you would falsely claim that “the entire hemisphere has been watching the violence, the protests, the attacks on the opposition.

Certainly, and despite the self-censorship of the media’s large “information” corporations against Venezuela, the hemisphere witnessed how the losing candidate of the opposition and his call to hate and violence in the streets caused the political assassinations of nine compatriots, Bolivarian leaders, pro-Chávez people committed to the revolution led today by President Nicolás Maduro, under the doctrine given to us by the eternal commander of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez.

Added to the violent record of these opposition groups are several more acts, namely the storming of several health centers in the presence of Cuban doctors as an act of xenophobia, the burning of public buildings and properties and offices of democratic political organizations, among other acts of vandalism.

For you and your government, these occurrences were not a source of concern. This is the nature of two-faced imperialist morals.

As for the rest, what the whole hemisphere and all of humanity watch in horror are the events at the illegal prison of Guantánamo where torture and other cruel treatment degrading to human beings has been practiced for more than a decade. This is one of the most shameful chapters of human history.

The noble of the world are shocked by the manner in which you have failed in your promise made in 2008 and 2012 to shut down that prison which is an embarrassment to the people of the United States, a great people.

President Obama, the government of President Nicolás Maduro, inheritor of the ideals of Commander Chávez and the National Plan for the 2013-2019 period, has the historical goal of achieving peace on the planet as the only way to save the human race. We are a nation of peace that works arduously alongside our Latin American and Caribbean brothers in order to achieve the true unity of our peoples, in order to be free and sovereign and consolidate ourselves as a zone of peace.

Your false, harsh and interventionist statements do not help to improve bilateral relations between the U.S. and Venezuela; on the contrary, they drive them toward further deterioration, which only confirms to the world the policy of aggression that you and your government maintain against our nation.

President Obama, your statements promote the emergence of a Pinochet in Venezuela. You must assume your responsibility before history; as for us, we will assume ours, which is to defend peace and independence in the homeland of Bolívar.

We alert all the independent governments of the world, the peoples and their political and social organizations to the U.S. government’s plan to provoke the so-called “dogs of war” in Venezuela in order to justify an imperialist intervention.

May our friends around the world know that we, as descendants of our Liberator Simón Bolívar and Commander Hugo Chávez, are ready to defend our right to be free against any form of imperial domination.

We call all friends of the Venezuelan cause to display the most active solidarity with our people. Today, just as Bolívar said in 1818, we repeat “fortunately, a handful of free people have often been known to defeat powerful empires.”

Compatriots, let us take up the sling of David to face this new aggression by Goliath.

Caracas, the Cradle of the Liberator Simón Bolívar, May 4, 2013.