WWP candidates:
'Stand with Chávez and the Venezuelan people!'
The Workers World Party election campaign and
our candidates, John Parker, Teresa Gutierrez and LeiLani
Dowell, stand in solidarity with President Hugo Chávez
and the millions of Venezuelans who will vote an emphatic "No!"
in the recall referendum Aug. 15.
The referendum, to recall President Chávez before the
end of his term in 2006, is championed by the same rich and
corrupt elements that have repeatedly attemp ted to overturn
his popularly elected government through economic sabotage,
illegal lock-outs and armed plots.
In collaboration with the Bush administration, these forces
staged a coup d'etat in April 2002 and briefly arrested
President Chávez. But hundreds of thousands of poor and
oppressed Venezuelans poured into the streets, surrounded
government buildings, and forced the coup makers to return
Chávez unharmed.
Since coming to office in 1998 and be ing re-elected in
2000, President Chávez has consistently mobilized
Venezuela's workers and peasants to fight in their own
interests. He has stood up to U.S. imperialism at home and
abroad, including opposing the brutal war and occupation of
Iraq. He has moved to put oil profits to use for people's needs
and to distribute land to the poor.
His government has strengthened relations with socialist
Cuba in defiance of the United States. Cuba, in turn, has
stretched out its hand in solidarity, providing personnel to
assist with health care, literacy and education programs.
These policies, together with Vene zuela's progressive new
Constitution, make up the Bolivarian Revolution.
The Venezuelan masses understand that the recall referendum
is yet another plot by U.S. imperialism and Venezuela's wealthy
to turn back history. The U.S. regime, whether Republican or
Democrat, can't abide an independent Latin Amer ican country
that is avowedly anti-imperialist, one that seeks to use its
oil revenues and other resources to lift up the poor and
oppressed instead of filling the bank vaults of U.S. finance
capital.
The local capitalists are desperate to hold onto their
ill-gotten riches. They hate the existence of a defiant
people's gov ernment that represents the interests of workers
and peasants, Black and Indigenous Venezuelans, women, lesbian,
gay, bi and trans people--all of whom they have kept
disenfranchised and impoverished for so long.
In recent months President Chávez has taken important
steps to bolster the Boli varian Revolution against these
unending attacks. These steps include strengthening the popular
Bolivarian Circles, moving toward establishing a people's army,
creating independent people's media, and speeding land
reform.
These measures, coupled with Chávez' recent
declaration that "the revolution is only beginning," have U.S.
imperialism panicked. Wall Street and Washington see the
specter of another Cuban Revolution looming--this time in one
of the world's main oil-producing countries.
But for the U.S. working class, the growth and development
of the Bolivarian Revolution is nothing but good news. It can
only help to empower struggling people all over the world,
especially in Latin America, and strengthen the working class
against the bosses here at home.
President Chávez has enormous mass support. Even
prominent voices of the U.S. ruling class like the New York
Times predict he will triumph in the Aug. 15 referendum.
Nevertheless, U.S. progressives must not be lulled into
complacency. The opposition still dominates business, media and
other key sectors in Venezuelan society, and has tried to
increase unemployment and artificially create scarcity of basic
products like food.
The U.S. government is openly interfering in the referendum.
Washington is financing the measure's sponsor, the
anti-Chávez group Súmate, through its misnamed
National Endowment for Demo cracy. Jimmy Carter and other
pro-imperialist "election monitors" will be on hand and could
attempt to influence world public opinion against Chávez
and in favor of U.S. intervention.
Súmate is only the peaceful, legal façade of
the reactionary opposition. The pro-U.S. forces were accused of
plotting with the Autonomous Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a
far-right death squad, to murder President Chávez
earlier this year. Opposition leader Carlos Andris Priez
recently called for Chávez's assassination if the
referendum fails.
We call on the working-class and progressive movement in the
United States to be on the alert to defend President
Chávez and the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution
against any U.S.-supported provocations.
Victory to President Chávez and the Venezuelan
people! Long live the Bolivarian Revolution!
Reprinted from the Aug. 18, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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Email: ww@workers.org
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