By Tim Young (Venezuela Solidarity Campaign – Britain)
For the past few weeks the Trump administration has intensified its long-standing aggression against Venezuela by deploying warships (including a nuclear submarine) in the Caribbean Sea in a purported anti-narcotics operation. US forces have carried out at least five incidents of strikes on boats in Venezuelan waters to date, killing 37 people. Trump’s latest move has been to authorise the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.
President Nicolas Maduro, as Venezuela’s current leader, has been a focus of this ‘war on drugs’ narrative, justifying the US’s illegal actions by demonising him as a ‘narco-terrorist’ engaged in drug trafficking, despite UN evidence to the contrary. The US also portrays him as being an illegitimate leader, offering a bounty of $50 million for his capture.
But overthrowing the Bolivarian Revolution has been a project of US imperialism ever since Huge Chávez became President in 1999 and set about transforming the country through a series of far-reaching measures including healthcare, education, land redistribution and anti-poverty programmes.
Key to these revolutionary changes was, and still is, the massive wealth in oil reserves that Venezuela has – the largest in the world – and the revenues generated from them. Chávez’s massive programme of wealth redistribution redirected these oil revenues to collective social purposes rather than funding the opulent lifestyle of Venezuela’s elites.
Additionally, to help realise his vision that “another world is possible”, not just for Venezuela, Chávez also envisaged (and ultimately helped create) key regional organisations to unite Latin American voices and provide progressive economic alternatives to neo-liberalism....
