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Fwd: [Viva_Cuba] Venezuela: New People's Army, Land to Poor

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I thought this might be of some interest to those following developments in Venezuela

David Yaffe



Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 3, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

CHAVEZ ANNOUNCES BIG STEPS FORWARD FOR VENEZUELA:
NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY, LAND TO THE POOR

By Berta Joubert-Ceci

It was a wake-up call. On May 9 Venezuelan forces surprised 150
Colombian paramilitaries who had been hired to assassinate President
Hugo Chavez. They were apprehended on the farm of opposition leader
Robert Alonso, architect of the "guarimbas"--violent street blockades
staged by supporters of the Venezuelan oligarchy. Alonso is a counter-
revolutionary who comes originally from Cuba.

It was a reminder that U.S. imperialism, joined with the Colombian and
Venezuelan oligarchies, has not ceased to conspire to oust President
Chavez from office--both in the open, through a failing recall
referendum, and in secret, as this incident reveals.

The leaders of this paramilitary grouping are also leaders of the
vicious Autonomous Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. To date 130
Colombian paramilitary forces have been arrested in this operation.
Their plan to kill Chavez has been brought to light through extensive
interrogation.

They were to kill and decapitate the Venezuelan president. Then they
planned to send his head to Cuban President Fidel Castro. As part of the
assassination/coup process they would fire on Miraflores, the
presidential palace, creating chaos in Venezuela.

Only the vigilance of the Venezuelan police and National Armed Forces
(FAN) prevented the counter-revolutionary plot from reaching its goal.
But with so much at stake and given the relentless quest of the
bourgeoisie to regain its previous power, the police and the FAN are not
enough.

Beginning early in the morning on May 16, one week after the plot was
brought to light and the paramilitary troops arrested, thousands of
people poured onto the broad Bolivar Avenue in Caracas to participate in
a March for Peace and Sovereignty and Against Paramilitarism and
Terrorism. They were eager to hear Chavez himself address them.

The march had been called by many different popular organizations with
varied political affiliations and perspectives, including labor unions,
political parties, and student, peasant and other social movements. All
were united in their loyalty to and support of the Bolivarian Process--
and all were intent on sending a message that the people themselves are
not going to allow an assault against their revolution.

So significant was this march that Chavez canceled his Sunday Aló
Presidente television program to be at the demonstration. His speeches--
really a dialog with the audience--usually last for hours and are
listened to very attentively by the masses. They stay as long as he
talks, and respond very actively with applause, cheers and loudly
chanted slogans. This is because his talks are a combination of history
class and presentation of action plans.

The May 16 speech was a particularly important one. Chavez announced a
new phase of the Bolivarian Revolution. While formally declaring the
revolution to be anti-imperialist, he made a call to the masses to be an
army for the defense of the revolutionary process.

Stating that the revolution is "just beginning," Chavez encouraged the
crowd to always think and reflect on the events that occur and put them
in a historical perspective. Always ask, he urged: "Where are we? Why
has it happened?"

He explained the dangerous and unipolar character of U.S. imperialism
after the fall of the Berlin wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union,
and its viciousness after the Sept. 11 events. He differentiated
neoliberalism from imperialist adventures by the United States, stating
that neoliberalism--the effort to invade countries via economic measures
like the Free Trade Area of the Americas, with the aid of the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank--is not having the success
the bourgeoisie hoped for in Latin America and the Caribbean. Therefore,
he said, Washington is reverting to old-style imperialist military
invasions.

Referring to the revolution's newly declared anti-imperialist character,
he said: "And that gives it a special content, which forces us to think
and act clearly not only in Venezuela but in the rest of the world,"
adding that "with the Constitution in our hands, we have to take actions
... for example, the expropriation of lands to put them in the hands of
those who really need them."

Chavez said, "We cannot permit [ourselves] to be absorbed by a
conservative spirit; either we are or we are not." He went on to spell
out the different laws that have been enacted and should be enforced,
like the Land Law and the Supreme Justice Tribunal Law. This last one
will allow, after careful review, the removal from the courts of counter-
revolutionary elements who are still part of the justice system and are
sabotaging the Bolivarian process.

The strongest call was for forming a popular army to defend the
revolution as part of the three lines of action of a newly created
"Comprehensive National Defense" strategy.

Saying that "the time has come to revolutionize the national security
and defense, the time to reconceptualize and reorient," Chavez quoted
Mao Zedong: "The people are to the army, what the water is to the fish."
He added that "like the fish in the water, the Bolivarian soldiers
should be together with the people."

He went on to say, "I call on all the Venezuelan people to incorporate
themselves into the national defense, the territorial defense, the
defense of the national sovereignty; and of course I not only make a
symbolic call to the people; no, as head of the state, as commander-in-
chief of the armed forces I have already begun to give the orders to
open the channels, in order to open the massive popular participation
into an integrated national defense."

The FAN has been ordered to select and summon retired military
professionals as part of the active reserve to "incorporate them into
the tasks for popular organization for the defense of the country in
each district, in each ravine, in each island, in each field, in each
university, in each factory, in each jungle, in each place where there
is a group of patriots, there they must be organizing themselves."

Explaining how this has already begun, Chavez said: "For example, in old
Tacagua, I found one day, when I was there, a gentleman who came with
his family to greet me, and he said to me: 'My Commander, how are you?'
He turns out to be a retired sergeant of the National Guard. I told him:
'Compañero, look throughout all this ravine for all the reservists,
[and] in the first place organize a squad, organize a company, organize
a battalion, make the list in a notebook.' A computer is not necessary
because sometimes we are stuck with this technology. Simón Bolivar
organized an army without computers and airplanes."

The National Defense Strategy's other two lines of action are:
strengthening the military by increasing the number of troops
nationally, for which Chavez has already assigned 20 thousand million
bolívares (approximately $1 billion U.S.) for the FAN and the National
Guard, and weeding out counter-revolutionary elements in the armed
forces.

In a display of compassion and understanding of the roots of the problem
in Colombia, Chavez mentioned that some of the paramilitary forces were
children who had been forced into the ranks of the paras by extreme
poverty and lack of opportunities in their own country. He said these
children are not in a military prison like the adults arrested, and that
they will be returned to their parents. He added that after consultation
with the National Council for the Defense of Children and Adolescents'
Rights, it had been decided that these children could stay in Venezuela
if they wish to, and receive free education in an effort to save their
futures.

The Bolivarian Revolution is at a crossroads, with all the elements,
particularly the strength of the peoples' commitment to it, in place.
However, U.S. imperialism is fiercely advancing with plans to destroy
it. As Chavez himself recently said, it is very strong but not yet
irreversible, as the Cuban Revolution is.

Venezuela, along with Cuba, is a beacon to all the dispossessed masses
in Latin America and the Caribbean who are rising up for the first time
in considerable unison, realizing that U.S. imperialism and its "free
trade" will never be the answer to their needs and their misery. On the
contrary, it is the health care, education and development of employment
offered by these revolutions that give hope to the millions of people in
deep poverty, not only in the region but worldwide.

This is a huge threat to the bourgeoisie. They will not let it go on
voluntarily. It is an urgent task for the people of the United States to
not only offer unconditional solidarity to the Bolivarian Revolution,
but to actively organize here and demand as loudly and clearly as
possible from the U.S. government: USA, hands off Venezuela!

- END -

(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subscribe wwnews-
on@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Unsubscribe wwnews-off@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Support the
voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)









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