Geography Archives: Venezuela

Ten years since his passing, the legacy of Commander Hugo Chávez lives on in the people of Venezuela and the world.

On 28 October 2005, a special event was held in Caracas at the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. At this gathering, held on the birthday of Simón Rodríguez (Simón Bolívar’s teacher), the Venezuelan government announced that nearly 1.5 million adults had learned to read through Mission Robinson.

Hugo Chávez emerged in the history of Venezuela, the Global South, and the international revolutionary movement when the thesis that ideological disputes throughout the world had ended was most entrenched. Far from being over, history had an important task for the Venezuelan people, who rose up against neoliberalism in 1989 and who continue to build a project of twenty-first-century socialism today.

The narrative about the Venezuelan government’s shift towards a neoliberal economic policy has been going on for some time now and has been promoted by the mainstream media.

An economist and National Assembly member reflects on the economic transformations that Chávez promoted.

VA writer Andreína Chávez takes stock of Venezuela’s alarming reality of gender violence and the lack of a comprehensive response from the state.

Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina look at the Venezuelan communes as a key force in an extended process of national liberation and social emancipation.

Communards from two rural communes in Yaracuy tell their story of a common struggle for the land.

For peasant farmers, the battle over seed rights is critical to their livelihoods.

“Venezuela is experiencing the first stage of a long recovery cycle,” said President Maduro.

On Friday, December 23, U.S. Federal Judge Robert Scola of the Southern District of Florida ruled that the Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab does not have the right to diplomatic immunity, as the U.S. government does not recognize the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

On December 12 to 13, 2022, an evidentiary hearing in the case of The United States v. Alex Saab was heard before Judge Robert Scola in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. 

The United States announces that Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab will be brought to trial before a federal court in Miami.

Each overthrow, removal, disqualification, dismissal, or murder of left-wing presidents or presidential candidates in Latin America highlight the legacies of Comandante Hugo Chávez, of President Nicolás Maduro and, in general, of the Venezuelan political process of the last 23 years.

The challenges facing the communes intensified after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013.

Commune spokespeople urged the Maduro government to boost grassroots efforts against “the metabolism of capital.”

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez defined communes as the key blocks to building socialism from the bottom up.

New documentary by Alex Smith explores travails of Saab who faces U.S. wrath because he tried to circumvent Washington’s onerous illegal sanctions levied against Venezuela.

The principal perpetrator, in what AP News called “one of the most extensive bribery scandals in U.S. military history,” popped up in Venezuela of all places. Leonard Glenn Francis bilked the U.S. Navy out of at least $35 million.

The incident gets so little media attention despite the fact that Argentinian authorities detained 19 crew members at a Buenos Aires airport at the behest of Washington.