Venezuela’s diverse lefts need internationalist solidarity

First published in French by Contretemps: Revue de Critique Communiste. Translated to English by Alejandro Coriat for NACLA.

“Everyone knows what happened” is the phrase that was on the lips of Venezuelans when the results of the presidential election were announced after midnight on July 28 (so it actually was July 29). Elvis Amoroso, president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), reported that President Nicolás Maduro had won with 51.2 percent of the vote, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the candidate for the mainstream opposition, trailed behind with 44.2 percent.

However, these results contradicted indicators that suggested the opposite: from the former bastions of Chavismo, particularly working-class urban neighborhoods, results unfavorable to Maduro seemed to emerge throughout the day. What happened? How can we from the left make sense of Venezuela’s presidential election? And how can we imagine a solution that respects democracy and the votes cast by Venezuelans?

Doubts and demoralization: Diverse lefts divided

Claiming to be on the left in Venezuela while opposing the Maduro government is no easy feat. The testimonies that I collected during a month of exchanges with various representatives of the Venezuelan left — including people who still claim to be Chavistas — show the difficulty of organizing while being targeted by the government’s political and social repression. This is all the more evident during election periods. A former Chavista government official told me: “It is striking to see that the right was able to have its candidate, but that it is us on the left who do not have the right to have a candidate. We have no representation in these elections.”

For these left-wing activists and members of popular organizations — many of whom acted as intermediaries for social policies under the Chavista governments — the question arose of whether or not to vote at all on July 28. On the one hand, voting for González Urrutia seemed unthinkable — there was no way these people would give their vote to the flag-bearer of María Corina Machado, the leader of the mainstream opposition who has in the past forged alliances with repulsive figures such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Javier Milei.

But voting for Maduro? The one who for years has been pushing the grassroots left away from the government? The one who made the poorest bear the brunt of the economic crisis brought about by corruption in the state oil company and U.S. economic sanctions? The one who repressed the working classes during the 2015-2017 security program called “Operations for the Liberation of the People” (OLP), killing thousands of young and Black men in the barrios? No, that wasn’t possible either.

So, for some of these activists, abstention seemed to be the only option — a solution that contrasts with years of Chavismo’s vindication of voting as the best political tool to resolve conflicts between Venezuelans.

Some divergent positions also exist: among those I spoke with, one person decided to vote for González Urrutia to “block” Maduro. Another said that it was his duty as a Chavista to vote for the opposition, to show the president in power that he no longer represents the ideals of the Chavista movement.

Others within trade union, Trotskyist, or communist forces that had more or less close relations with Chavismo opted for spoiled ballots — although this route requires a little technical effort from voters. Voting in Venezuela is electronic, done through machines installed in polling stations that transmit the votes to the CNE and issue a voting receipt, which is then deposited in a ballot box. The only way to obtain a spoiled vote is to initiate the voting process on the touch screen, wait the three minutes given in total to vote, and collect a “voto nulo” receipt.

But beyond the electoral choice, the question coming to the surface is about how to organize a united collective of the diverse leftist currents that oppose the Maduro government. Divided into many political parties, trade unions, social movements, and other plural spaces such as think-tanks and literary journals, coalition-building seemed difficult before the election, when leftists reproached each other for their divergent positions vis-à-vis the history of Bolivarian Revolution. Language is becoming a central strategic question: during a general assembly that sought to build a post-election alliance, it was surprising to see how some words have fallen out of use. Terms like “popular power” or “the people” are substituted for a language of “workers” versus “elite pacts.” It is a sort of victory on the part of trade union activists and some of the Trotskyist parties who can boast of never having joined the Chavista ranks.

In this context, an activist and researcher who I spoke to on July 19, just over a week before the election, told me: “It will be the moment after the elections that will bring us together. A few days before the election, we can still talk about the recovery of the oil company by making it operate through cooperatives, or the nationalization of private hospitals... but only after the election will we know if we are going to have the space necessary to fight for our social and collective rights, or if we will have to fight for the simple right to exist politically.”

This opinion aligns with that of a leader of a large grassroots organization: “Nicolás cannot win. They don’t have the votes,” the leader said. “And if Nicolás takes the election by force, we will have nothing left to do but to defend our ability to do politics.” Since the elections, these same activists seem to agree that this is what has come to pass.

July 28: The end of revolutionary democracy?

The evening before the July 28 election, I went to visit community leaders in a working-class neighborhood in the west of Caracas, a historic bastion of Chavismo. Their positions had changed compared to a month earlier. They were convinced that the electoral machinery — the mobilization structures of Chavismo — could prevail. After a month of exchanges with various sectors of the Venezuelan left, it was the first time I was hearing such a statement. Even more surprising, a Chavista activist told me: “And even if we don’t win, we have to win. The danger is too great.” Fear was indeed taking hold among Chavista-identified people in working-class neighborhoods about what could happen if the opposition won.

At the same time, an opposition slogan began circulating on the streets of Caracas and social networks: “Ahora vamos a cobrar” — now we will collect what is due to us. The mainstream opposition seems to be referring to a new strategy that will allow them to claim this election — in contrast to what they see as the surrender of Henrique Capriles Radonski to Maduro in 2013 in what they believe was a stolen election, even though the CNE audit confirmed Maduro’s victory.

But for historical Chavista activists, the slogan carries a different connotation: cobrar sounds like a threat of material and physical harm against their neighborhoods, their activism, and them and their families. A recognized researcher who has participated for years in negotiation efforts in Venezuela understands these fears. “Unfortunately,” the researcher told me, “the discourse of the most radical mainstream opposition does not reassure the Chavistas, which prevents progress, including in the highest levels of negotiation.”

On July 28, election day, Caracas and the country were calm. Even though irregularities were reported during the installation of polling stations, Venezuelans queued from dawn to dusk to vote. But it was not an “electoral celebration” as under Chavismo. While previous elections were days of lots of movement, citizen mobilization, and meetings of families, friends, and activists, this time everything seemed strangely calm — too calm. It was difficult to find people with whom to spend the day and wait for the results, apart from closed election monitoring meetings organized by NGOs. In the east of Caracas, in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, the absences are felt: the oldest generations vote but the young people who have been living abroad for years are not present. More than 7 million Venezuelans, a fourth of the population, have left for other countries; working-class neighborhoods feel most emptied out.

The announcement of the results comes late — very late. This is not exceptional in itself, but certain facts sow doubt. We hear reports from various witnesses that the results are not being transmitted to the CNE, or that these witnesses for the political parties, despite being authorized by the CNE, are encountering difficulties obtaining the actas, the print-outs where results per polling station are collected. We also hear from various sources that the authorized representatives of González Urrutia were forbidden from entering the CNE’s tabulation room, where the general results of the election are validated by the members of the CNE and representatives of the political parties.

Past midnight, the CNE president Elvis Amoroso finally announced Maduro’s victory, after denouncing a terrorist attack against the results transmission system — an attack that must have been overcome in order to issue results based on, according to Amoroso, 80 percent of the votes. In Venezuela, only the CNE has the right to announce results, which it does once the tally shows a so-called irreversible trend — a lead for the winner that the difference in the remaining votes would not be able to change. However, in Amoroso’s announcement, the difference between Maduro and González Urrutia was 700,000 votes. The remaining 20 percent ​​of ballots represented more than 2 million votes. The reversal of the results was still mathematically possible. And the testimonies from the polling stations, as well as the popular mobilization that followed, say a lot.

Popular and citizen mobilization: Democracy in the face of repression

At 7 a.m. on July 29, having crossed Caracas from west to east, I am surprised to see how empty the city is even though the capital usually wakes up with the sun, between 5:30 and 6 a.m. A friend, a feminist activist, shared the same worries later expressed in a feminist statement. “Six more years of this is too much!” she told me. “What are we going to be able to do?”

She had worked for the CNE in the past, and according to her knowledge, the alleged terrorist attack was impossible. But she, a feminist activist in a country where abortion is still penalized by law, drew a more important conclusion: “The only thing I still trusted was the electoral system. But now it’s like with the apagones, it turns out an iguana came to cut everything off, and now we have no suitable explanation, only results that we must take their word for.” During widespread power cuts (apagones) in 2019, when authorities offered explanations from forest fires to cyberattacks, many used the image of an iguana to ironically criticize the government’s lack of answers.

A few hours later, Caracas and the rest of the country began to move. A popular revolt took to the streets. These mobilizations went beyond political organizations and beyond the binary divide that has historically been at the heart of analyses on Venezuela. Women and men in the barrios, many undoubtedly once supporters of Chavismo, took to the streets demanding respect for their votes and for their right to live in democracy. These mobilizations are not remotely guided by the Venezuelan right or by U.S. imperialism. Dissident leftists and local researchers who work in the barrios argue that the traditional opposition did not have the means to strategically seize these mobilizations. The same goes for the government, which quickly responded with repression.

In just three days, more than a thousand people were imprisoned. More than 20 deaths have been recorded, and more have been forcibly disappeared. On August 1, Maduro announced the development of new high-security prisons where there will be forced labor and re-education “like in the old days.” In his speech, the president recalled the times of the last military dictatorship under Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who put prisoners to work on the construction of roads. “Let them go build roads,” Maduro said.

One of my acquaintances, a researcher, is now sheltering in her home a woman whose child was a victim of an OLP police raid and who was an electoral witness at her polling station. Electoral witnesses are accredited by the CNE to observe the electoral process on behalf of political parties and obtain copies of the vote tallies. Police are searching neighborhoods for electoral witnesses, and reports are multiplying of police and paramilitary repression and control of the barrios where the demonstrations started. We are witnessing relentless repression and criminalization of a popular revolt.

Latin American diplomacy and internationalist solidarity

As various international actors seek to mediate the Venezuelan political conflict, Latin American diplomatic relations are central. In a joint statement, left-governed Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico challenged the Maduro government by calling for a public audit of the votes cast on July 28 — the only institutional tool that would facilitate a sovereign and orderly off-ramp from the tensions, uncertainty, and repression afflicting the Venezuelan people.

Unlike U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recognition of González Urrutia as the winner of the elections, which provokes even more tension, Latin American diplomatic bodies are doing the arduous work of maintaining channels of dialogue with the stakeholders in this political conflict, seeking to build negotiations among them.

The international left can do their part. Our comrades, as well as the Venezuelan people as a whole, need our support. The call to respect democracy is undoubtedly the best tool to move forward in this situation. “Everyone knows what happened,” including our comrades who are now seeking to build a political space worthy of the name. We owe ourselves to the popular struggles of which they are the spokespersons.

Yoletty Bracho is a Venezuelan activist and researcher based in France. She has devoted her research to the relationships between working-class neighborhood organizations and the state that emerged from the Bolivarian Revolution. Present in Venezuela in the weeks preceding and during the July 28, 2024 elections, she met with representatives of various components of the left and Chavismo.