Venezuela’s National Assembly (AN) has approved two bills with the aim of further empowering the communal councils and communes that lie at the heart of the country’s project of communal power.

With a majority of the opposition boycotting and an abstention rate of almost 70%, the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) obtained 69% of the vote in the country’s December 6 National Assembly (AN) elections.

Venezuela is no stranger to protests, registering thousands of demonstrations, rallies and strikes each year. As of October 1, about 7000 protests had occurred this year (roughly 25 a day), according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflicts.

Venezuela is confronting COVID-19 amid foreign sanctions and mercenary incursions. Complicating matters further is the explosive combination of deep recession and a nationwide lockdown, which has triggered incidents of looting and riots.

Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have put into sharp relief their true nature. This is perhaps no more evident than when we compare Bolivia and Venezuela.

Given the exponentially rising death toll from COVID-19 and the devastating social and economic effects of brutal lockdowns, what could a humane and progressive response to the global pandemic look like?

Despite a deep economic recession, a profound political crisis and international sanctions that have ravaged its health sector, the South American nation of Venezuela is demonstrating that prioritising lives is possible in the battle against COVID-19.

While, by April 9, Brazil to its east had registered more than 16,000 cases and 822 deaths and Colombia to its west, had seen its tally climb above 2000 cases and 54 deaths, Venezuela had only recorded 167 cases and 9 deaths.

One of the sectors hardest hit by Venezuela’s economic crisis is the nation’s LGBTI community. Lacking access to life-saving medicines and denied certain rights, activists say there is still much to be done within the revolution.

The international left has lost one of its most lucid intellectual, pedagogical educators and determined activists with the passing of Marta Harnecker on June 14, aged 82.

Federico Fuentes explores grassroots communal organisation, and the tension between popular power and sectors of the government.

The media calls them armed thugs and US Senator Marco Rubio wants them put on the terrorist list, but who are Venezuela’s colectivos (collectives)? Green Left Weekly’s Federico Fuentes met with some of them to find out.

“I believe that failure to recognize the positive aspects of the Maduro presidency undermines efforts at international solidarity, which is very much needed at this moment of such intense hostility and threats on the part of European, North American and South American governments.”

Portrayed by the media as a peaceful, democratic movement, it is clear that what Venezuela is experiencing is a right-wing destabilisation campaign that not only seeks to remove Maduro but to roll back the important gains of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution.

Venezuela has been rocked in recent weeks by almost daily protests and counter-protests, as right-wing opponents of socialist President Nicolas Maduro seek to bring down his government.

Statements, articles, letters, and petitions have been circulating on the Internet for the past month calling for an end to the “destruction of the Amazon.”  The target of these initiatives has not been transnational corporations or the powerful governments that back them, but the government of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales. At the centre […]

WikiLeaks’ release of cables from the United States embassy in La Paz has shed light on its attempts to create divisions in the social and indigenous movements that make up the support base of Bolivia’s first indigenous-led government.  The cables prove the embassy sought to use the US government aid agency, USAID, to promote US […]

The election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, on the back of a mass rebellion that overthrew successive governments, has stirred great interest in this small Andean nation.  Given that the Evo Morales government recently celebrated its 2000th day in power — a feat in its own right for a country that has had around 180 […]

Recent scenes of roadblocks, strikes, and even the dynamiting of a vice-minister’s home in the Bolivian department (administrative district) of Potosi, reminiscent of the days of previous neoliberal governments, have left many asking themselves what is really going on in the “new” Bolivia of indigenous President Evo Morales. Since July 29, the city of Potosi, […]

The tremendous success of the April 19-22 World Peoples Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, has confirmed the well-deserved role of its initiator — Bolivian President Evo Morales — as one of the world’s leading environmental advocates. Since being elected the country’s first indigenous president in 2005, Morales has […]