Two statements from Comunes (Venezuela): ‘Against the imperialist threat’ and ‘The Maduro government fears the people’

Translations by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Against the imperialist threat

Comunes International Committee, August 21

Under the guise of fighting drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, an extraordinary deployment of US military forces in the southern Caribbean was recently announced. This clearly constitutes an open and brazen threat to the national sovereignty of any country in the region. We strongly condemn this deployment and call for mobilising the anti-imperialist spirit that has characterised the continent's progressive, democratic and revolutionary forces.

The tragedy is that this is happening at a time when Nicolás Maduro’s government has decided to implement the most brutal economic austerity measures against the working class, ban the revolutionary left and persecute social movements.

Now is the time for building authentic and popular national unity, which requires:

• Organising the clamour of the popular majorities demanding procedural guarantees for those prosecuted, persecuted and criminalised for dissent,
• Pushing for a general wage rise and the reopening of collective contract discussions, and
• A return to the rule of law enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, especially with regards to the full restoration of freedom of speech, thought and peaceful assembly.

The national government seems to want to use anti-imperialist rhetoric to maintain the solidarity of social movements and allied governments. Any strategy adopted to confront the imperialist threat must be built on ensuring that the suffering of a people who have endured the loss of waged employment, the dissolution of social security and deterioration of basic public services, is not made worse.

It is time to demand that those who have lived off Venezuela’s crisis — parliamentarians, judges, bankers, and senior government officials — be the ones who place themselves on the frontline of the military containment strategy, to prevent the poorest from once again bearing the brunt of this crisis.

The way to defend the homeland is through greater freedoms and more democracy, and never with authoritarianism and the persecution of those fighting for social justice. Therefore, we demand the national government cease the attacks it has unleashed on leftist organisations, social movements and political parties. National unity must include everyone, by overcoming wounds to strengthen democracy, and by fully restoring the rule of law and justice.

National unity must be built on the system of rights enshrined in the National Constitution!
We condemn any foreign interference!
End the threats and repression against popular movements demanding their rights!

The Maduro government fears the people

Comunes, August 20

In less than a week, the government has intensified its repression against social struggles and the left.

First, it attacked a group of mothers as they held a peaceful vigil outside the Supreme Court of Justice, demanding the release of their unjustly detained children.

Three days later, Martha Lía Grajales, a lawyer and human rights defender who had been supporting the mothers in their protests, was arrested and disappeared.

Martha Lía was released thanks to popular and international leftist protest. In response to this pressure, the government unleashed a campaign of lies to not only discredit her but human rights organisations and leftist intellectuals, paving the way for a new crackdown.

The following day, a retired workers’ leader and teachers’ union leader were detained in Maracay. All this in the same week that the government finally pulverised Venezuelan wages to below a dollar a month.

This is not the first time that this government, which increasingly resembles the right and has increasingly been exposed as such to the left inside and outside Venezuela, has persecuted popular struggles and progressive sectors.

Hundreds of social and union leaders have passed through Maduro’s prisons. Any popular mobilisation is brutally repressed.

Just seven months ago, the government imprisoned [presidential candidate] Enrique Márquez, harassed [REDES leader] Juan Barreto, and persecuted [leftist lawyer] María Alejandra Diaz, who had to seek refuge in an embassy. All for ​​simply putting forward a position that differed both from the government, which has betrayed the people, and the subservient neoliberal right.

As it shifts to the right and towards capital, this government further represses popular protest and becomes increasingly fearful of leftist and progressive positions that expose its betrayal. It prefers a thousand times over a false polarisation with [far-right opposition leader] María Corina [Machado], from which it benefits and is able to sustain its precarious internal cohesion, than to have to respond to people’s demands and criticism from the left.

Government spokespersons have justified this repressive barrage by arguing that the country is under siege from the US and right-wing terrorist threats. For government acolytes, it is never a good time to protest or criticise. They act like the “good cops” of the peace of the cemetery (“they are right, but this is not the time to raise such criticisms”).

However, these initial events (the attacks against the mothers, the arrest of Martha Lía) occurred before the US made its insane threats public. Furthermore, if the government is sincerely interested in calling on all Venezuelans to close ranks in the face of threats of imperialist aggression, why does it choose to repress, defame and persecute anyone who thinks differently? What is the purpose of persisting with an economic policy of starvation that sows hopelessness and discouragement in the vast majority, when they are needed to defend the homeland?

The government is not afraid of the US, to whom it sells oil and with whom it has not stopped negotiating; the government is afraid of the people.

Hence its vicious persecution of those who fight. Hence its campaign of lies against all those who question their neoliberal policies from the people’s side. If the government were serious about being anti-imperialist, and did not simply seek to use it as a red rag to negotiate with Washington, they would engage in dialogue with the people, not with [the big business federation] Fedecamaras and the gringos.

We, Comunes, have always confronted the positions of the fratricidal right, which prefers a scorched-earth policy and would not hesitate to hand the country over to the US to seize power. We have always stood up to US imperialism, which has sowed death and misery across the continent and the world. We have always insisted that the solution to the Venezuelan crisis must be a matter for us, Venezuelans, without interference or intervention.

We are prepared to confront any form of foreign intervention without hesitation. But that does not mean we renounce the need to denounce and confront a government that has destroyed popular sovereignty, eroded the constitution, imprisoned and repressed the humble, enriched the rich and impoverished the poor, trafficked our sovereignty, and surrendered itself to world powers in order to preserve power at all costs.

We will defend the homeland, confront imperialism, and once again denounce the interventionist and anti-democratic right, but we will also fight against this neoliberal and authoritarian government.