Geography Archives: Venezuela

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 […]

Raul had invited him. He replied he didn’t want to come see me so I wouldn’t catch the flu he had. That was nothing but a pretext to avoid the torture of my habitual questions…

On Saturday, March 1, Colombian military forces attacked an encampment of the FARC, the largest Colombian guerilla group, across the Ecuadorian border.  The strike, in violation of international law, reportedly killed up to 20 guerrillas in their sleep.  Among those killed was Raúl Reyes, a top FARC commander.  The attack has sparked a regional crisis […]

In surveying US press coverage of the recent tensions between Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, one might come to the conclusion that Colombia has become the victim of the wrath of its evil next door neighbor, Hugo Chavez.  Once again, the media spin machine has been turned against Venezuela, bypassing a contextual analysis of the situation […]

Mónica Baltodano was one of the Guerrilla Commanders of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) during the long struggle against the Somoza dictatorship.  In 1979, she was part of the command structure in Managua that directed the insurrection in the Nicaraguan Capital.  During the subsequent revolutionary period in Nicaragua, she served as Regional Affairs […]

In recent weeks, external and internal pressures against Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution have intensified dramatically. It is clear that US imperialism and the US-backed Venezuelan opposition see the defeat of Chavez’s proposed constitutional reforms on December 2 as a green light to push forward their plans to destabilize the government. In addition, growing internal problems, with […]

The way Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Haiti and Venezuela in its 2008 World Report reveals an underlying assumption that the U.S. and its allies have the right to overthrow democratic governments.1 The Venezuela section of the report said nothing about ongoing attempts by the U.S. to overthrow the Chavez government.  It is a […]

Latin America was the first place where the US imposed the most callous economic system ever seen: neo-liberal capitalism.  Starting in Chile in 1973, the US used its power, along with its control over the IMF and the World Bank, to force governments across Latin America to adopt neo-liberal economic policies.  This has seen Latin […]