Thousands of Rural Activists March in Support of Venezuelan President Chavez

Thousands of peasant workers took to the streets of Caracas last Thursday to hand over a list of programmatic suggestions to the government and to show their support for current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

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Liverpool, July 30th 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Thousands of peasant workers took to the streets of Caracas last Thursday to hand over a list of programmatic suggestions to the government and to show their support for current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Over 2000 peasant activists from across 18 of Venezuela’s states were present at the march, as well as other members of the national popular movement who attended in solidarity. The march was the result of months of organisation by the peasant movement, which had held hundreds of grassroots education workshops and peasant political assemblies throughout Venezuela in order to draft their proposals for the government.

The movement, lead by the Bolivar and Ezequiel Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ), hopes that the suggestions will be incorporated into the government’s socialist plan for the nation for 2013-2019, which was made public in June.

 “This army of men and women, Bolivarian and Zamoranos, we are taking on this historic task. Today we are handing over the proposals of this great debate which we have developed from within our communities, from within our communal councils, from within our communes, and today we see that there is political participation here,” said Orlando Zambrano, spokesperson for the CRBZ.

Some of the main proposals included in the groups’ agenda were to move beyond the “liberal bourgeois state” towards a communal model; to eliminate the problem of bureaucracy and reformism within the revolution, and for ownership over the means of production to become “social” by transferring it over to the popular movement.

Following a loud and lively march which began at 9 am, activists sang Venezuela’s national anthem, “Glory to the Brave People” and made speeches to the crowd.

During his speech, Zambrano warned other Venezuelan citizens and peoples’ movements across the globe that “North American imperialism” was trying to destabilise the Venezuelan government, as well as to sabotage regional initiatives to unite Latin America such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). He also stated that the upcoming Venezuelan elections, due to be held in October, would be a crucial event for global politics.

“The elections on October 7th represent a historic hope for the people of the world, because the Venezuelan revolution transcends our territory and is an international revolution, and the leadership of Chavez is an international leadership.  We reject the plans being developed by the Venezuelan counterrevolution… and if they try to destabilise and launch actions against the process and against the government, they will face a people which are ready to fight,” stated Zambrano.

“Because if there is something we have to be clear on, it’s that this country is ungovernable without the … president, Hugo Chavez, historic leader of this revolutionary process, which has sown the hopes and dreams of the Venezuelan people,” he concluded.

Land for those who work it

On receiving the document on behalf of the government, Vice-president of the National Assembly, Aristobulo Isturiz, stated that one of the government’s principal goals was to achieve food sovereignty in Venezuela.

“This involves socialising the large means of production, strengthening the war against monopolies, oligopolies and fundamentally, against the large landed estates… all of Venezuelan society must be aware of the importance of a redistribution of land to those who work it, so that we can produce food, everybody knows the high price that has been paid by the Venezuelan peasant,” said Isturiz. 

The elimination of the concentration of land in Venezuela, through large landed estates, is cited as one of the government’s objectives in its 2013-2019 plan for the nation.