Venezuela

Latin Lib News podcast now online!

A new podcast discussing events in Latin America from a Libertarian Communist perspective. This first episode looks at the rise and legacy of Hugo Chávez. He may have died but his project – misleadingly named ‘revolutionary socialism for the 21st century’ – continues unabated in Venezuela.

What, therefore, is the legacy of Chávez? How can genuine revolutionaries cut through the polarised red herrings about the true nature of the Venezuelan regime? And what can we expect of Nicolas Maduro, Chávez’ successor?

Chávez' death: Neither in mourning nor celebration, time for social struggles to become autonomous!

When an illness becomes serious, when medical attention becomes a vehicle for myopic, politically motivated decisions and when a patient becomes drunk with power, it can only end this way. The strongman has died, and in so doing, he has initiated a substantial shift in the Venezuelan political landscape.

What used to be the regime’s greatest strength has suddenly turned into its defining weakness: it was all Chávez, and, without him, the only solution is to fabricate an absolute commitment to his memory and his plans for succession.

Venezuela: the killing of Sabino Romero

The official statement of the El Libertario collective following the murder of Sabino Romero, Yukpa indigenous rights activist, in Zulia, Venezuela last night.

During the night of March 3, 2013 Yukpa Cacique Sabino Romero, well known for his defense of the rights of the Yukpa people, was assassinated on Chaktapa Highway, in the Sierra de Perijá (Zulia State).

Announcing @latinlibnews: keeping you up to speed on Latin America in 140 characters

Announcing a new Twitter account that will provide irregular and brief updates on social movements and news of interest to libertarian communists in Latin America.

Follow it here: https://twitter.com/latinlibnews

Venezuela and the ‘Bolivarian revolution’: Beacon of hope or smoke and mirrors?

Shawn Hattingh looks beyond the figure of Hugo Chavez and analyses Venezuelan style ‘Socialism for the Twenty First Century’.

Introduction

The War on Democracy (Documentary)

The War On Democracy was John Pilger's first for cinema. It explores the current and past relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile.

Using archive footage sourced by Michael Moore's archivist Carl Deal, the film shows how serial US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series of legitimate governments in the Latin American region since the 1950s.

Venezuelan prison occupation

1000 friends and family members of inmates are currently occupying a prison in Venezuela. This in protest against the judicial system, and prison conditions and brutality. The Venezuelan government believes the occupation to be part of a CIA backed plot to destabilise the country.

Around one thousand friends and family members of inmates held within Venezuelan prisons, have today entered the Yare prison near Caracas, and have refused to leave. They are made up of around 800 women, 150 children, and a handful of men.

Manifesto of the Federación Anarquista Revolucionaria de Venezuela

Manifesto of the newly formed Federación Anarquista Revolucionaria de Venezuela (FARV), an anarchist political organization based in Venezuela.

1) The Federación Anarquista Revolucionaria de Venezuela is a collective that adopts the ideology of Libertarian Communism, a system where both capitalism and the bourgeois State that supports it are abolished, where the people as the producers of goods and services have control of what is produced in the form of collective ownership, where such production is distributed according to the principle

Book review: "Venezuela - Revolution as Spectacle" by Rafael Uzcátegui

In times of global austerity and reduced means, the concept of ‘revolution’ is once again in popular discourse, with recent events in North Africa being feted throughout the West. However, Rafael Uzcátegui’s engaging new book – packed, as it is, full of assertion supported by meticulously-sourced fact - stands as a stark reminder of the semantic vacuity of the term, in one Latin American country at least, and the similarities between the self-professed ‘revolutionary government’ of Venezuela and the capitalist economic model.

Uzcátegui, a key organiser in the independent Venezuelan human rights group, PROVEA, as well as a co-editor of the nation’s sole anarchist newspaper, El Libertario, states his thesis clearly in the introduction: Hugo Chávez’s regime in Venezuela is neither the socialist paradise of his own government’s pro

The Bolivarian government against union autonomy - FAI

From the Iberian Anarchist Federation's Tierra y Libertad website, an article describing and criticizing the government of Hugo Chávez and its attempts to co-opt the Venezuelan labor movement.