In this two-part interview, political organizer and analyst Hernán Vargas, a spokesperson for ALBA Movimientos, examines the current geopolitical moment through the lens of recent events in Latin America that will shape the strategic horizon of the continent in the years ahead.
In Part I, Vargas discussed the shifting global balance of power, the remilitarization of the Western Hemisphere, and the place of Venezuela within a broader international confrontation involving powers such as China, Russia, and Iran. In Part II, he turns to the Bolivarian Process, examining sovereignty, the significance of January 3, and the strategic role of communes in Venezuela’s future.
Cira Pascual Marquina: Much of our conversation up to now has focused on the broader geopolitical context. However, what did January 3 reveal about the situation facing the Bolivarian Process itself?
Hernán Vargas: One of the problems we face is that, because January 3 happened on a specific day and was not immediately followed by a second wave of attacks or a military occupation, many people have come to see it as an isolated event. I think that is a mistake. January 3 was not an isolated episode. It was part of an unfolding process of military takeover that continues to shape the continent. Venezuela remains in a particularly vulnerable position within that unfolding process, even though it still has a government chosen by the Venezuelan people rather than by the United States.
In many ways, Venezuela finds itself in what I would describe as an extremely tight chokehold. The country is under immense pressure from the most powerful military force on the planet. Depending on how Venezuela moves and how the United States chooses to act, the consequences could be devastating. What is often lost from view is how close we came to a much larger war.
Venezuela has effectively been pushed into a situation in which diplomacy is conducted under conditions of extreme asymmetry. Faced with overwhelming military superiority and without allies prepared to confront the United States directly, the government has had little choice but to pursue negotiations while trying to avoid a wider conflict. This is not diplomacy conducted under normal circumstances. It is diplomacy carried out under coercion: the alternative would be a much broader and more destructive conflict.
When more than 150 aircraft and seven military vessels were deployed in support of the January 3 operation, the message was clear. The United States was prepared to escalate further. President Maduro’s decision not to authorize a counterattack was extremely important, because it prevented a bloodbath and avoided creating the conditions for a formal war. Had Venezuela responded militarily, the situation would have spiraled into a much broader conflict with far greater loss of life.
CPM: You have argued that what is at stake goes beyond the survival of a government. What is really at risk in Venezuela today?
HV: What I am arguing is that the risks we face go far beyond the fate of any particular government. The first risk is losing peace. If the current situation evolves into a new phase of destabilization, it could ultimately lead to a military occupation of the country. That possibility should not be dismissed lightly.
The second risk is losing the republic itself. Over the last twenty-seven years, Venezuela has been engaged in a sustained effort to build and defend a constitutional framework capable of making sovereignty real. That process has always been contested. We have had to defend it repeatedly, and today we are facing a renewed attempt to dismantle it.
One example is the debate around the Hydrocarbons Law. There has been a great deal of confusion surrounding the issue. Venezuela has introduced changes to its legal framework, but those changes do not abandon the principle that the country’s energy resources belong to the Venezuelan people and are administered according to the Constitution. The debate is not simply about legislation. It is about who exercises sovereignty and in whose interests the country’s strategic resources are managed.
CPM: Throughout this conversation, you have emphasized sovereignty as something that must be actively defended and constructed. How do you understand the role of the Bolivarian Process in that sense?
HV: I think we have had to build sovereignty from the bottom up. For much of the twentieth century, sovereignty existed more as a formal concept than as a lived reality. The state formally administered it, but in practice, Venezuela functioned within a framework of dependency where many of the most important decisions were shaped by external interests.
The Bolivarian Process initiated a different path. Through popular mobilization, elections, political debate, and organization, Venezuelans began to construct a democracy with greater real content. The 1999 Constitution was part of that effort, but it was only the beginning. Once those principles were translated into concrete policies, conflicts immediately emerged.
We saw this very clearly in 2002. Venezuela had approved a new Constitution and began adapting its laws accordingly. Questions that had previously been treated as untouchable suddenly became matters of public debate: who controls the land, who controls the country’s natural resources, and who has the authority to make decisions about them. The 2002 coup was not simply a reaction against a government. It was also a reaction against the effort to make sovereignty real.
The same dynamic appeared during the conflict around PDVSA [Venezuela’s national oil company]. A sector of the oil industry acted as if the company belonged to those who managed it rather than to the Venezuelan people. The confrontation that followed was ultimately about sovereignty in a very concrete sense: who controls the country’s strategic resources, how those resources are managed, and who decides how the resulting wealth is distributed.
Those struggles were difficult, but they were part of a broader process of transforming sovereignty from an abstract principle into a political reality.
CPM: The Bolivarian Process has survived coups, sanctions, economic crisis, and now direct military aggression. What explains that resilience?
HV: One of the key things that has happened in Venezuela over the last twenty-seven years is that Chavismo has built a new formula of power. It is not simply a government or a political party. It is a political process that has taken root across multiple dimensions of society and the state.
When people look at Venezuela from the outside, they often reduce Chavismo to its leadership. Leadership is important, of course, but it is only one part of a much broader reality. Over time, the Bolivarian Process has built institutional strength, political organization, territorial presence, and forms of popular participation that go far beyond electoral politics.
That is one of the reasons why all of the repeated attempts to remove Chavismo have failed. The opposition often approaches the situation as if removing a president would be enough to dismantle the entire process. But what exists in Venezuela is much more complex. There are political organizations, social movements, communal structures, sectors of the armed forces, the militia, and millions of people who have participated directly in the construction of this project.
At the same time, Venezuela’s traditional elites have been unable to build a viable alternative. Many of the sectors that led the coup attempt in 2002 gradually withdrew from domestic politics. Some shifted their efforts toward lobbying for outright military intervention in Washington, while others increasingly placed their hopes in sanctions and external pressure.
As a result, there is a profound asymmetry. Chavismo possesses political organization, institutional presence, territorial roots, and an identifiable national project. The opposition has struggled to construct comparable forms of organization or a coherent proposal for governing the country. In many cases, its strategy has become increasingly dependent on external actors rather than its own social base.
That does not mean Chavismo is free of contradictions or challenges. Every political process has them, but it does help explain its resilience. What has been built in Venezuela is not simply an electoral coalition. It is a long-term political process that has generated structures of participation, organization, and collective identity capable of withstanding enormous pressure.
CPM: I would add that Chavismo is sustained not only by organization but also by a political project that is alive. What does that project consist of today?
HV: Indeed, one of the things that is often overlooked is that the Bolivarian Process is not held together solely by its organizational structures. It is also sustained by a political project that has been developed over many years.
In 2012, Chávez outlined what he called the Five Historical Objectives.[1] These remain extraordinarily important, although I do not think we have always done a good job of popularizing them or ensuring that people fully understand their significance. Over time, those objectives have been enriched through new debates and new experiences. More recently, President Maduro has spoken of a period of transformations that builds upon those same strategic foundations.
At its core, there is a vision of the country. It is a project framed around territorial socialism built from the commune, but it is also much broader than that. It is a project centered on independence, socialism, productive transformation, and the construction of a new geopolitics oriented toward a multicentric and pluripolar world rather than one dominated by imperialist hegemony.
It also includes something that is rarely discussed but increasingly important: the defense of life itself. We are living through a planetary and civilizational crisis linked to the logic of capital. The question is no longer only how societies are organized politically or economically. It is also whether humanity can confront a model of development that increasingly threatens the conditions for life on the planet.
These are not abstract ideas. They have found expression in concrete policies and forms of organization throughout the Bolivarian process. For many years, Venezuela directed a substantial share of its national income toward social investment, seeking to guarantee rights that had previously existed only on paper. Even under conditions of blockade and economic siege, that commitment has remained an important point of honor.
One of the distinctive features of the Bolivarian Process has been the effort to link public policy with popular organization. Rights were not conceived simply as services delivered by the state. In many cases, they were accompanied by forms of community organization that allowed people to participate directly in identifying problems, designing solutions, and managing resources. This happened in areas such as water, health, education, housing, and land rights and access.
Over time, these experiences contributed to the development of communal councils and later communes. The idea was not only to improve public administration, but also to create mechanisms through which communities could increasingly exercise forms of self-government and collective decision-making.
In that sense, the political project has always involved both a strategic vision of the country and an effort to build new forms of participation and power at the territorial level.
CPM The commune is a central part of the Bolivarian project. Why do you see it as so important at this particular moment?
HV: The commune is important because it is where many of the ideas we have been discussing take concrete form in everyday life. When we talk about sovereignty, participation, and territorial socialism, these are not abstract concepts. They must be expressed through real mechanisms of organization and decision-making within communities.
What has been happening in Venezuela is a gradual deepening of this process. Through popular consultations, communities identify priorities, debate proposals, and decide how resources are allocated. In many cases, it is the community itself that executes the projects, with the support of the institutional framework of the state. This changes the relationship between the state and organized society.
One of the most important developments in recent years has been the effort to transfer resources and decision-making power directly to organized communities via popular consultations. Through these consultations, communes identify priorities, select projects, and implement them directly. In that sense, the commune is increasingly being conceived not simply as a space for participation, but as a center of governance and territorial planning.
At the same time, there is a growing emphasis on the commune as a space for production and not only for participation. The challenge of building economic sovereignty requires moving beyond dependence on oil and strengthening forms of local and communal production. This is part of a broader effort to construct what has been called territorial socialism.
In the current context, marked by sanctions, blockade, and external pressure, these forms of organization take on even greater importance. They are not only mechanisms of governance but also forms of collective resilience. They allow communities to sustain life, organize resources, and respond to immediate needs under very difficult conditions.
For that reason, I see the commune not only as a space of participation but also as a strategic element in the defense and transformation of Venezuelan society. It is part of a broader historical process in which popular organization continues to develop as both a form of resistance and as an alternative in a world facing a profound civilizational crisis.
Note
[1] The Five Historical Objectives are the strategic goals outlined by Hugo Chávez in the Second Socialist Plan for Economic and Social Development of the Nation, 2013–2019 (Plan de la Patria), presented in 2012 as his government program. They are: (1) defend, expand, and consolidate national independence; (2) continue building Bolivarian socialism; (3) make Venezuela a social, economic, and political power in Latin America and the Caribbean; (4) contribute to a multipolar and balanced world order; and (5) help preserve life on the planet and save the human species.
Shaking the World: Reports from Revolutionary Venezuela is a biweekly column by Cira Pascual Marquina for MR Online, offering frontline analysis of imperialism, popular power, and revolutionary struggle in Venezuela.