VENEZUELA
February 27, 1989 - 30 years after the Caracazo
One of the greatest anti-imperialist struggles of the Latin American working class against the bourgeoisie and the IMF
2019: In order to crush the reaction and the imperialist blow on Venezuela and Latin America...
Let’s disarm the 2000 generals and officers of the bolibourgeoisie that today have occupied Venezuela militarily, let’s arm the workers and the poor people, break with the IMF and expropriate the capitalists!
Let’s lead the Caracazo towards victory!
Today, February 27, 2019, is the 30th anniversary of the Caracazo, a mass semi-insurrection that took place in Venezuela in 1989, where over 3,000 were murdered in the streets by the Venezuelan army, which at that time had a chain of command of officers who led that counterrevolutionary operation. Both Chávez and Diosdado Cabello and other generals of the Bolivarian Armed Forces today were, as officers, played a key role during this brutal massacre.
The Caracazo was a true semi-spontaneous mass insurrection that openly hit the regime of the so-called Punto Fijo Pact, where different bourgeois gangs take turns to be in power to share a small portion of the oil rent, as junior partners of imperialism, by starving the people.
Together with this paper, we publish a statement that was issued in the International Workers Organizer No. 22 in 2013. This article settled accounts with the Chavist bourgeoisie and its so-called "Bolivarian revolution", which was nothing but deception with many words. Such revolution left intact the business of the bourgeoisie and imperialism, while expropriating this great revolutionary struggle of the Venezuelan masses and also of all Latin America, which burned in a fervent anti-imperialist struggle. We present then, together with this note, the article of the aforementioned newspaper of 2013, which gives an account of the great revolutionary battles of the Latin American masses and of the sinister role of Stalinism that, handing Cuba over to the Yankees, supporting all the governments of that so-called "Bolivarian revolution", that with Morales, Kirchner, Lula, Correa, etc. saved the imperialism’s property and its banks from the hatred and the struggle of the masses, which since 1997 with the revolts of Ecuador and in the first decade of the 21st century, from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, etc. hit hard imperialist rule in the subcontinent.
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Once the "Bolivarian revolution" played its role and guaranteed that the IMF will take to the last drop of its looting of the continent, after guaranteeing transnationals’ business with regional markets such as Mercosur, Andean Pact, Alba, etc. ., now the Yankees are coming for everything. Lula, Morales, the Kirchners, etc. have long surrendered, after disorganizing a huge mass revolutionary offensive.
With them, this scam of the "Bolivarian revolution" has also been taken and it has forced to kneel socialist Cuba before imperialism... where the right of inheritance, private ownership of companies and land and foreign investment has already been guaranteed by the new Constitution of that new Bolibourgeoisie that has emerged from the bowels of Castroism and Cuban Stalinism.
"Socialism does not work anymore," said Fidel Castro... "not even in Cuba." This has been a stab in the back and the hardest blow to the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses of Latin and North America, cornered and harshly attacked by all the imperialist powers, mainly in recent years after the crash of Wall Street.
Surrendered and with the Yankee flag in Havana, Stalinism has sold out Nicaragua and yielded the Colombian resistance, as they did with the FARC pact with Santos, while this country is already a true US aircraft carrier, with 7 military bases and troops that have entered directly to block Venezuela with the lie of "humanitarian aid".
The new Castroist bourgeoisie and its Bolivarian partners from Venezuela are far from preparing a new "Bay of Pigs" against the landing of the Yankees, like the one in Cuba in 1961 which expelled the US invasion of the island.
While Venezuela is still surrounded, under Trump's command, the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) is currently in Havana surrendering in "peace talks" before Duque’s government. The FARC had surrendered before.
Before the Yankee offensive and the ever-present danger of an open mass eruption, from La Havana and Caracas what is being prepared is a great pact to sell out Venezuela, and with it, of all Latin America. Already Lula, blessed by the church, kneeled before Judge Moro, while Morales broke records of delivery of minerals to imperialism from Bolivia. Not to mention the super-businesses of the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran bourgeoisie in Central America. In Argentina, Kirchner maintains from the parliament, with PJ, voting all the laws to the hated anti-worker government of Macri.
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Today in Venezuela the regime of that real scam of the "Bolivarian revolution" has already fallen apart. Neither the Constituent Assembly nor the Parliament exist. There is only one puppet president appointed by Trump; and on the other, the Bolivarian Armed Forces and their caste of officers controlling the entire territory, disciplining the masses with manu militari; while Venezuela has been surrounded and blocked by the Yankees and their lackeys of the Latin American bourgeoisies. That is the tragic result of the cowardice of the Bolibourgeoisie and the "war of concerts" and the "humanitarian aid" of imperialism on February 22 and 23.
The bolibourgeoisie tries to show that they are the only ones capable, under these conditions, of preventing a new Caracazo. The Yankees do not share this idea. They believed the lemon has been fully squeezed. They no longer need their old junior partners. These have already played their role. The Yankees are coming for everything.
Once played its role, with a broken Venezuela, with starving workers and shot to death by the arch-reactionary government of Maduro, imperialism knows that the conditions to get directly the entire Venezuela have been met. "Venezuelan oil for the Americans": that is what this decisive blow that Trump seeks to impose for Venezuela and all of Latin America is about.
The cowardice and submission to imperialism of the native bourgeoisies are already evident. Imperialism has seized all the goods, properties and bank accounts that Venezuela owns abroad. It is a treacherous robbery of the Venezuelan nation. It has recognized a president named in the US embassy. It has encircled and blocked Venezuela, ending up occupying Colombia militarily and imposing -with the "Grupo de Lima"- a real grouping of colonies and banana republics commanded by Trump and Wall Street.
We are facing a fierce attack by imperialism in Latin America. The US pirates, under Trump's orders, have taken the whip against the oppressing people below Rio Grande.
The Yankees stamp on their backyard while there is ongoing tough trade war against the Europe of Maastricht and Japan competing for the control of the world economy and of China and Russia. 6,000 PDVSA petrol stations and its 3 refineries in the US, belonging to Citgo have been expropriated from Venezuela, which are in partnership with Russian Rosneft (company where BP holds 20% of its shares). He has seized the accounts in Miami from Cabello, Maduro and his army officers, whom they force to surrender.
The “brave” response of the regime didn’t take long to come, with a besieged blocked Venezuela. The army and the armed forces, far from attacking a single interest of imperialism, militarized Venezuela and control that not a single mass action erupts… neither against the US nor the coup, whose authors walk freely though the streets from Caracas to Cucuta. Meanwhile, they are in full negotiation with imperialism, which they want to make it official in the UN.
Today, after 3 months, in Nicaragua, under the church’s blessing, the Sandinist government sat in a negotiation table with the bourgeois opposition. From Havana and Managua, there’s a claim for a negotiation with the imperialist master, before the masses of workers and peasants erupt, putting the property and the power of all the exploiter in jeopardy. These Bolibourgeoisies don’t want to stay out of business in this new US offensive on the planet.
The panic the Bolibourgeoisie and imperialism have of using the masses in this push between them leads to resolve this whole crisis in the barracks. In there, they are counting the generals and officers that each band has. For now, the majority of the Bolibourgeoisie in the armed forces insists they are the warranty to control the masses for the starving people not to break into a new Caracazo. They see themselves in the shoes of Lula and refuse to have such a future; while they claim for a negotiation that includes them in the future colonial Venezuela.
They desire so much to explain the US senior partners that they guarantee the business deals. Over the last years they have Exxon and Chevron the great profits of Orinoco’s oil and to the US and Canadian transnational mining companies all the wealth of gold and Venezuela soil. They guaranteed the property to the “coupist” oligarchy, the great land extensions and the big trading chains they control. They have guaranteed the payment on time of the fraudulent foreign debt to the IMF.
The US don’t want a single dollar more to stay there, as there were already millions of dollars with which a new Bolivarian bourgeoisie got rich, administrating the oil revenues for years.
This is how this tragedy for the masses of the continent is developed. The sellout of Venezuela to imperialism gets deeper, Colombia is now a colony and an direct US aircraft carrier and a capitalist Cuba is full of bourgeois keen to make business deals in association with imperialism, which came out from that evil Cuban Communist Party… However, this partial victories of imperialism will be possible, ultimately, it the masses let them. The masses were not removed from the scene, although their struggles have been a thousand times diverted, disorganized and betrayed.
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Meanwhile, the Latin American bourgeoisies warn that a direct intervention of USA (as Bush did before in Iraq) can make a volcano erupt in Latin America and USA. This is what the “Lima Group” has stated and resolved in its last meeting.
The USA has said they don’t rule out that option, while they bet on the rendition of Maduro and an important part of his generals. All the bourgeois gangs and imperialism look very carefully the limits they have in this dispute, because at each step a starving masses breakout is at stake. As we saw, the Bolivarian armed forces took the streets and militarized all the neighbourhoods and cities of Venezuela, with the excuse of “confronting the coup”. Guaido comes in and out from Venezuela with his people, they walk through the streets freely… and Maduro doesn’t touch them a single hair. He only crushes every attempt of the masses to enter to the struggle and look for bread.
Today, everyone looks at Haiti with fear. In that country, a huge mass insurrection against starvation, for bread against the corrupt government of Moise and the invader troops. After a thousand defeats, the workers and poor in Latin America are far from giving up.
Today is the 30 anniversary. The best tribute we have is to see it reflected in the revolutionary masses of Haiti that has started
The last act of this play of the US offensive on the American continent is not yet written. None of the US puppets, neither Macri nor Piñera nor Bolsonaro, have finished in settling their Bonapartist attempts and hard blows that try to deal to the masses. The US imperialism hasn’t still got the regimes it needs to complete a new round in the definitive colonization of its backyard.
The US regime and Wall Street pirates don’t have that strength inside USA against their own working class either. A large party of the US bourgeoisie warns about this. A war adventure of Trump that goes beyond the balance of forces and the current threats can set New York on fire and make the American masses to rise. The counterrevolutionary adventures, such as Vietnam, were made in moments of huge strength of the US regime after world war two; or under conditions of great feeling of national unity that the masses in USA have, like after the Twin Towers self-attack made by Bush.
But these are not the current conditions of the USA. The US workers have taken to the streets, as they did below, from the very rising of Trump’s government, fighting and defeating in the streets, the movement of white supremacy, as they imposed before the US withdrawal of Irak.
The parody of Trump’s wall in Mexico is an offensive on the entire Latin America so they can go after the Mexican oil and wealth and to put discipline on the more than 30 million Latin American workers that live, work and also fight inside USA.
43 million starving people threaten USA with a huge social crisis. The focus of the 2008 economical crash is there. These events show that the true war that Wall Street pirates have declared is against the world working class, and in the first place to the US working class, as it did with the jackal guised as a sheep of Obama.
With starvation and the crisis of the workers and the American people, Obama bankrolled the losses of the finance oligarchy, while unleashed all its crisis to the working class and took all its gains away. Trump’s weight today and his anti-immigrant demagogy is based in the hard blow dealt by Obama to the US working class, leaving it divided, torn apart and political subordinated to the different imperialist Wall Street gangs, “democratic” as well as “republican”.
None of this would be possible, also, without the inestimable collaboration of the World Social Forum until recently, as well as that of Stalinism, Castro and all the renegades of Trotskyism that since some years came out to support the left of the imperialist pirates Democratic Party, which are accused of being “socialists”… so “socialists” as Maduro or Morales.
Sanders and a handful of immigrants shown as progressive in Wall Street Roman circus cannot deceive a single serious worker that has a minimum of class perspicacity. They are fanatic defenders of the US transnational companies in the world, main guards of their left pockets. They keep silent on the existence of 500 CIA prisons around the world and the military bases with which imperialism controls the planet.
These “democratic socialists” of US claim for “democratic elections” in Venezuela, with the Bolivarian troops occupying the workers and popular neighbourhoods and with Venezuela blocked and besieged by the US troops. Miserables!
What separates the working class at the north and south of Rio Grande is not the needs or desires of struggle, but the leaderships that subordinates the workers everywhere to the bourgeoisie, the executioners. What difference is there between the rising workers of the maquilas (sweatshops) in Matamoros, northern Mexico, with the ultra-flexibilized workers of GM or the Latin American slaves that harvest the crops in southern USA as the black slaves did before?
They call “socialism” to Venezuela where the workers collect 6 dollars a month as wage and to Nicaragua, where the pensioners demand a miserable pensions are shot to death. The World Social Forum speaks of “socialism of the 21st century”. Trump continues their words and calls Venezuela a “socialist regime” to which they “have to put an end”, as he announces. It is a vile lie and great deception. Venezuela, Nicaragua, such as Haiti or Argentina or other Latin American countries are no more than semi-colonial capitalist countries in decomposition rotting state as a result of imperialism looting their wealth together with a native bourgeoisie that is servant and junior partner of the US.
Imperialism can launch such an offensive, even a political and ideological one, against the masses because they have a great ally: the Stalinist scum that has sold out the workers states. In 1989, the same year of Caracazo, the new Stalinist bourgeoisie of Russia and China handed over the greatest gains of the proletariat in the 20th century to Citibank and world imperialism. Today, 30 years later, they did so with Cuba, establishing in its constitution the sacred right to private property of the capitalists and imperialism in the island, under the control and with the warranty of a police-military state.
30 years after Caracazo; 30 years after the sellout of the workers states, two way forwards are shown. On the one hand, the tendency of the masses to open the road for the socialist revolution; on the other hand, the treacherous leaderships yielding each one of the exploited’s gains.
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30 years after Caracazo, we pay tribute to those murdered by yesterday’s colonels which today are Bolivarian. We affirm, more than ever, that in order to crush the US, to make the Latin American working class to rise, to end with the invasion to Colombia, to generalize the masses of Haiti, to stop the brutal offensive of the servants of imperialism in the Southern Cone, the only way out is to deepen the way of Caracazo and take it to victory, as it remained unfinished as a great historical work of the Venezuelan and Latin American working class.
The way out is to unite all the workers and peasants of Latin America and USA under a single war cry. As Che Guevara used to say, what US imperialism and its aggression to Venezuela, Colombia and the entire sub-continent is “let’s make two, three Vietnam”.
The workers of Venezuela have in their hands the possibility of dealing a hard blow on imperialism, and in that road, getting rid of the bourgeois scum that has stolen away their struggle which is the Bolibourgeoisie. For that, they need the unity and solidarity of all the workers of Northern, Central and Southern America. What is stopping this fight, ultimately, is the Bolibourgeoisie and Stalinism that demand to be the ones to complete the defeat of the masses, so they can stay in business.
The way forward is that of the socialist revolution. This is what Trump, the US and the anti-worker repressive starvationist bourgeoisie deserve.
The way forward is no other than the expropriation without compensation of the lands, the trade branches and the banks to imperialism and its junior partners. This anti-imperialist struggle of the Venezuelan masses is feared by all the bourgeoisies of the continent and tried to be asphyxiated by Stalinism and the former Trotskyists which have moved to be the left wing of the Bolibourgeoisie long time ago.
Guaido, Maduro and the US dispute the 2000 multimillionaire generals of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie. The workers must come out to the streets. Let the million of starved and disposed come down from the hills and seek their brothers, the rank and file soldiers, to defeat the shock forces of Maduro’s government, to arm themselves and open the only possible way to free and get Venezuela’s independence from imperialism, that of the victory of the socialist revolution, the way of a victorious Caracazo. This struggle would be a true electric shock on the workers and peasants of Centre and South America.
The Colombian workers and peasants are destined to break the imperialist blockade of Venezuela. The only thing stopping this is the treacherous leadership of FARC, Stalinism and the pseudo-leftist Petro, which was introduced as “democrat” “progressive” and “anti-imperialist” deceiving the masses in the last elections with this evil lie. All the renegades of Trotskyism, as LIT for example, called to vote for him. And today he is hidden underneath Duque’s skirt, supporting the US invasion to Colombia.
The workers and the people of Haiti cannot fight on their own either. They are one of the most important anti-imperialist detachments of the Latin American working class. The workers of Matamoros, of the maquilas in Mexico, who wave gotten rid off their corrupt treacherous sold-out leaderships, show the way to fight against labour relaxation of conquests, starvation and the sellout of the entire Latin American and US working class. The working class of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and the entire Southern Cone is in this struggle, waging a hard resistance together with their class brothers and sisters of the entire world, in a fierce battle against imperialism.
Maduro and the Bolivarians aspire to give the US a starved Venezuela, with the masses torn apart, with slave labour force and maquilas as Bangladesh today. With 6 dollars as monthly wage, the exploited of Venezuela will be, together with oil, the biggest wealth which imperialism wants to take for itself. The dream of the Bolibourgeoisie today is to establish, as Kim Jong Un does with the meeting in Vietnam, a negotiation with imperialism. He and the Bolivarians have slave labour force and maquilas to offer. Trump has already said that would be good for his henchmen of the native bourgeoisie to offer good business deals under his direct command. The very Bolivarians have already established free tax areas for the maquilas in the mining arc of Orinoco, as the Castro brothers did before in Puerto Mariel.
The working class of the American continent has waged a thousand and one fights and it was subjected to a thousand and one treasons. It is a task of all the fighters that strive to re-found the Fourth International to reach its goal in the American continent, which is no other than setting up a sensitive nerve from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, so that if something is sensed along its way, it can make the uprising and rebellion to break out in all the masses of the continent.
US out of Venezuela!
Long live the fight of the masses of Matamoros and Haiti! They continue today the fight of Caracazo. They are not alone. Their greatest allies are in the working class in Northern and Southern America.
Out with the US and its military bases from Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Brazil! British out from the Falkland Islands!
Wall Street steals our wealth… We need to expropriate without compensation all the transnational companies, the bankers and break with the IMF in the entire continent!
DOWN WITH THE PACTS AND SECRET NEGOTIATIONS OF HAVANA AND CARACAS WITH IMPERIALISM AND THE COUP MEMBERS TO SELL OUT THE LATIN AMERICAN REVOLUTION!
To stop the US and imperialism, the way out is not the scam of the “Bolivarian Revolution” but to open the road for a socialist workers revolution!
For a socialist Venezuela, without generals or capitalists!
For the Socialist United States of Centre and South America!
YANKEE GO HOME!
Secretariat of International Coordination of the FLTI