Internationalism and the Venezuelan Revolution

This year Venezuela surpassed the United States in direct government funding to Latin America and the Caribbean. Its pledges in aid, financing, and energy funding so far this year amount to $8.8 billion. This commitment has created space for many of the continent's countries to assert their sovereignty from American domination.

How is this possible? The United States has an economy (measured by GDP) the size of 67 Venezuelas. Sixty countries of the world are richer than Venezuela per capita.

The answer is internationalism.

The Venezuelans have realized that prosperity for the people of Venezuela is tied to that of all the world's peoples. Moreover, its physical security from a U.S.-sponsored attack depends on the ties of solidarity it is forging with peoples around the world. One country cannot build a society free of violence and poverty when the world around it is full of the savage barbarism of imperialism and exploitation.

For an integrated Latin America

Ever since the European conquest 500 years ago, Latin America's wealth has been stolen and its development blocked by imperial powers, led first by Spain and Portugal, then by Britain, now by the United States. Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution rests on the conviction that the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean can only be free if they join together in a united stand against imperialism. The Bolivarian movement aims to tear down the barriers to genuine development by integrating the countries of Latin America.

This goal finds expression in a host of specific projects that aim to enhance the independence of Latin American nations through cooperation. For example, Venezuela is joining with Uruguay to build an insulin plant - the largest on the continent. Uruguay has the technology and patents and Venezuela has the financial resources. The plant will free people across the continent from dependence on multinational corporations that charge many, many times what the medication costs to produce.

Oil refineries and factories are being jointly built with numerous countries. In this way, countries are able to build infrastructure that they could not manage alone. Integration is not only economic; there are plans to integrate education and medicine.

Peoples' trade agreement

The heart of Venezuela's internationalist vision is the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, called by its Spanish acronym ALBA ("dawn"). Known as a "people's trade agreement," ALBA is based not on capitalist market principles but on a vision of social welfare and mutual economic aid. (See ALBA: Dawn of an Alternative) For example, Venezuela trades oil to Cuba while thousands of Cuban medical personnel provide services to Venezuela.

Venezuelan aid funds projects such as AIDS treatment in Nicaragua, housing in Dominica, and doctors in Haiti.

When Bolivia was struck with devastating floods this year, Venezuela sent in teams to help the victims of the disaster. In total Venezuela pledged over $800 million to Bolivia, more than six times the U.S. commitment.

Venezuelan asphalt paves the streets of Bolivia's capital. Venezuela has offered to buy garbage trucks for Haiti and build a dairy cooperative in Argentina. Funding has gone to building an oil refinery in Nicaragua and to electricity plants in Nicaragua, Haiti and Bolivia. Venezuela has given an estimated $1.6 billion in fuel financing to at least 17 countries.

Venezuela aided Argentina in paying off its debt by buying $5.1 billion in Argentine bonds. Due to Venezuela's efforts, regional debt to the IMF dropped from $49 billion in 2003 to $694 million this year.

Venezuelan aid is not limited to poor underdeveloped countries. Venezuela has supplied subsidized oil to poor communities in the United States and Britain. In the Bronx, in New York City, Venezuelan oil was provided at a 40% reduced rate to poor people. In London, England, bus fares have been reduced by half for the city's poor because of an agreement between London's mayor and Venezuela, in which London provides technical expertise in public transit in exchange for Venezuelan oil.

A new way of banking

For decades the exploited and poor countries of the world have had to turn to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for loans. With these loans came conditions. Countries were forced to privatize industry and slash education and public services. Crucial infrastructure was sold off and neglected. Profits soared, but so too did poverty, while national economic infrastructures were shattered and national economies wrecked.

To help break dependence on the IMF and World Bank, ALBA has launched the Bank of ALBA. All members of ALBA have equal participation in the bank. The bank grants low interest loans with no strings attached.

Venezuela has also proposed a Bank of the South, which would use billions from Venezuela's reserves for seed money. In the meantime Venezuela has opened its state bank to neighboring countries. Bolivia, Uruguay, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti can now borrow money with interest rates at 5% compared to up to 35% by private banks.

Two, three, many Vietnams

Venezuela alone cannot provide the resources needed to solve the world's urgent problems of poverty, war, and environmental collapse. But it's making an enormous contribution of resources and political solidarity, and this powerful example can solve the world's problems if the peoples of other countries follow the lead. Venezuela is using economic assistance to promote a political goal: unity of the world's peoples against imperialism. It thus has a fundamentally different purpose than Canada's governmental aid programs, the purpose of which is to increase the power of the Canadian government and the profits of Canadian corporations.

Thus in 2006, when Israel began its brutal bombing campaign and invasion of Lebanon, Venezuela pulled its embassy from Israel. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has frequently spoken out against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and is strongly opposed to an attack on Iran. Chávez consistently exposes the lies of imperialism and its aim of exploiting the wealth of the world's people for the benefit of a small minority.

Venezuela and other ALBA nations have been the world's most articulate and determined voices in calling for action against climate change and defense of the environment against capitalist profiteers.

As evidence mounts that the United States is seeking regime change in Bolivia and Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has warned that "If U.S. imperialism attacks our peoples, using their lackeys in Venezuela and Bolivia, they can be sure that we're not going to wait with our arms crossed." Chavez has made clear that the people of Venezuela and Bolivia will defend themselves against imperialist aggression. Recalling Guevara's defiant appeal in 1967 to defend Vietnamese, then under attack by U.S. imperialism, Chávez said, "We will shout with Che Guevara and then one, two, three, four, five, or 10 Vietnams will have to be created in Latin America."

A document of the United Socialist party of Venezuela (the party which Hugo Chavez has initiated) states, "the current world situation creates, and makes necessary, the formation of an international anti-imperialist bloc on a grand scale" made up of governments, social movements and parties "to unite in action hundreds of millions of people in all the world against imperialism and its wars."

Solidarity in action

On August 26, Chavez said that "2008 could be a good time to convoke a meeting of left parties in Latin America to organize a new international, an organization of parties and movements of the left in Latin America and the Caribbean."

Venezuela has hosted numerous international gatherings including the World Festival of Youth and Students in 2005 and the World Social Forum in 2006.

Venezuela has given special emphasis to supporting and encouraging indigenous movements across the Western Hemisphere, and Hugo Chávez has identified the socialism of indigenous peoples as one of the main sources for the Bolivarian movement's vision of "21st Century socialism." (See Chávez Calls for United Socialist Party of Venezuela)

On August 8, 2007, Venezuela hosted the first International Congress of the Anti-imperialist Indigenous Peoples of Latin America (Abya Yala). A thousand indigenous people from across the Americas converged in San Tomé for this historic event. Among them was a delegation of indigenous activists from Canada who attended on the Venezuelan government's invitation. (See The Bears Are Mounting the Silver Eagle to Meet the Condor and Declaration of Kumarakapay)

The revolutionary people of Venezuela are still at an early stage of their struggle for liberation. Yet they have provided an example of what the working and oppressed peoples can achieve when we too rise up in struggle for liberation and social justice.