Venezuelan labor leader describes revolutionary
process
By Deirdre Griswold
New York
A representative of Venezuela's new labor
federation, the CUTV, told a progressive audience here on Sept.
26 that while the U.S. government and the multinational
corporations are obsessed with bringing down the government of
Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan people are in motion and
determined to defend their revolutionary process.
Pedro Eussie spoke at a solidarity meeting held in a packed
hall at the premises of the health and hospital workers' union
1199 SEIU.
A plot to attack Chávez's plane had just been
uncovered by the Venezuelan government, forcing the president
to cancel a planned visit to the United Nations.
Eussie described how Venezuela, the fifth-largest oil
producer in the world, has earned the enmity of U.S. big
business by pursuing its stated goal that "the country should
belong not to the multinationals, but to the Venezuelan people.
Venezuela has the sovereign right to define its economic and
foreign policy and its form of democracy."
Venezuela has declined to join the Free Trade Area of the
Amer icas, being promoted by the U.S., and instead proposes a
trade alli ance of the countries of Latin Amer ica and the
Carib bean. This conforms to the aims of the great Latin
American liberator Simon Bolivar, after whom the Venezuelans
have named their struggle-the Bolivarian Revolution.
"We take very seriously the threats against our revolution,"
Eussie said. "There is a 'Plan Venezuela,' and the extreme
right-wing continues to try to destabilize our country. What
happened in Chile has not happened in Venezuela, but, as in
Nicaragua, we have a permanent state of siege. And the plan to
wear down the revolutionary process comes from the U.S." He
added that the revolutionary process is ongoing, and that they
are still fighting to consolidate power.
Eussie described the CTV, which has joined with the bosses
in a campaign to destabilize the Chavez government, as
Venezuela's "false labor movement." He pointed out that it gets
resources from the National Endowment for Democracy, a
noble-sounding front for right-wing political projects begun
under the Reagan administration. Eussie also criticized the
AFL-CIO for funding the CTV.
"We have been going to workers here to demand accountability
from their unions," he said. "We understand that the interests
of the multinationals are not those of the great majority of
people in the U.S."
Some capitalists in Venezuela have been shutting down plants
in industries like plastics, oil, textiles and agricultural
products and moving their capital out of the country. Eussie
says that workers have taken over 20 such facilities and are
pre paring to operate them by themselves. "This is a
qualitative advance in our movement," he stressed. "The workers
are asserting their authority against savage capitalism."
Teresa Gutierrez of the International Action Center and
other speakers at the meeting called on people here to step up
their solidarity with Venezuela and its revolutionary efforts
to elevate the majority of the people while resisting sabotage
by the elite and U.S. imperialism. Speakers included Harry
Simon of the Unión del Barrio (Neighborhood Unity) in
San Diego, Phoebe Jones Schellenberg of Global Women's Strike
in Philadelphia, and William Camacaro of the Coalition to
Support the Bolivarian Revolution.
Reprinted from the Oct. 9, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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