Geography Archives: Venezuela

Coming out of the December 2 referendum defeat — the first for the Bolivarian movement since the election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 1998 — and facing discontent amongst popular sectors at the lack of advance in the Bolivarian process, the pro-revolution forces face a big challenge in securing an overwhelming victory in the […]

Every May 21st President George W. Bush declares a day of “solidarity” with Cuba and repeats the lies of nearly half a century trying to de-legitimize Latin America’s most successful social revolution in history.  This year, the leading US presidential candidates chimed in, but a potentially explosive scandal involving an axis of US-based terrorist groups, […]

The rhetoric about a “clash of civilizations” and a “war on Islam” has found its way easily into Arab intellectual discourse, where it has taken solid root, along with other similar “concepts” (or what I’d rather call “non-concepts” — like the term “terrorism” — since they are extremely vague and yet ideologically loaded) that were […]

  On Sunday, May 4, 2008, I joined two dozen progressive activists marching in a circle in front of the Bolivian embassy.  Thanks to our spirited presence, 150 or so right-wing Bolivians from the province of Santa Cruz were unable to get in front of the embassy to demonstrate in favor of the autonomy referendum […]

The Right respects legality only when legality favors it.  The history of our America has shown that a thousand times.  The confrontation that is convulsing Bolivia today is no exception. The Santa Cruz autonomy referendum is just the tip of the iceberg.  To limit the debate to a question of legal pettifoggery would be a […]

Introduction People across the world, from Mexico to Mozambique, have once again been taking to the streets in protest.  The reason is to demand that their most basic need be met: access to food.  With food prices skyrocketing over the last few months, billions of people around the globe have been relentlessly driven towards starvation.  […]

“Bolivia is on the verge of exploding,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned on April 21. Speaking on the eve of an extraordinary summit of the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA — the alliance made of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Dominica) that was partly called to discuss the situation in Bolivia, Chavez stated the […]

As May Day approaches, there are four things that are worth remembering: For workers, May Day does not celebrate a state holiday or gifts from the state but commemorates the struggle of workers from below. The initial focus of May Day was a struggle for the shorter workday. The struggle for the shorter workday is […]

From a distance, partisan politics in Iran may appear to turn on international challenges or internal discriminations only.  But a third contentious split that reaches the highest levels is about the size of the government financed largely by oil exports.  At its core, the dispute over whether public sector payroll, subsidies, and social programs deserve […]

Parroquía 23 de Enero, Caracas. It is a Friday night in Caracas, Venezuela.  We are standing in the back of a pickup truck surrounded by dozens of motorcycles, tearing through the streets of Catia, the massive slum area that makes up nearly half the population of the city.  On the motorcycles, revolutionaries young and old, […]

23 de Enero, Caracas. On Thursday, April 3rd, a group of approximately 500 armed combatants representing the most vociferously revolutionary sectors of the Venezuelan Revolution engaged in a display of force in the historically-revolutionary parroquia of 23 de Enero (January 23rd) in western Caracas, making painfully evident the deep and volatile divisions that threaten the […]

Fernando Lugo, a bearded, left-leaning bishop, is expected to win Paraguay’s historic presidential election on April 20th, upsetting a 60-year rule by the right-wing Colorado Party.  While escaping the heat of the Paraguayan sun by sitting in the shade of an orange tree, farmer union leader Tomas Zayas explains, “If Lugo is elected, it will […]

The elections in Nepal on Thursday, April 10th, resulted in a victory for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), stunning the mainstream international press. Mulyankan monthly magazine is almost 18 years old.  It is the largest leftist monthly magazine of Nepal, with a circulation of 30 000 copies per month.  Shyam Shrestha has been actively […]

On May Day 2005, I marched with workers in Caracas.  And the slogan workers were chanting at that time was “Without Comanagement, There Is No Revolution.”  Indeed, the main slogans for that May Day march, organized by the UNT, were “Comanagement Is Revolution”  and “Venezuelan Workers Are Building Bolivarian Socialism.” We don’t hear much of […]

MRZine must be commended for its recent publication of Mike Friedman’s interview with Nicaragua’s Comandante Mónica Baltodano.  It is especially welcome because there has been a dearth of information and analysis about Nicaragua in the English-language world ever since the 1990 electoral defeat of the revolution.  That in some ways is puzzling because the actions […]

The US media and party election machines have once again transformed the run-up to the US elections into a melodrama.  Across the country, party candidates have been swaggering across stages, surrounded by stars and stripes and CNN logos, to spew out the latest piece of propaganda that the spin doctors have managed to conjure up.  […]

Is there anyone with a deeper knowledge of the contemporary American labor movement than Kim Moody?  He not only seems familiar with the strategies and outcomes of practically every strike and organizing drive of the last twenty years.  He also appears to know the status of each union local, large and small, as well as […]

More than a year ago, I attended the official book release for the Venezuelan edition of Eva Golinger‘s Bush Versus Chávez, published by Monte Avila, and the book had previously been printed in Cuba by Editorial José Martí.  I recount this to make the following point: long before the publication of Bush Versus Chávez in […]

The US Government is waging war on Venezuela — not your typical, traditional war, but a modern, asymmetric — 4th Generation War – against President Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution.  Below is a presentation I created regarding the pattern and escalation of US Government aggression against Venezuela, with clear quotes and cites as evidence to […]

Reeling from the blow that it received in the aftermath of the Colombian military’s illegal incursion on March 1 into Ecuador — which resulted in the brutal massacre of a number of civilians and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), including its chief negotiator Raul Reyes — US imperialism has once again […]