Venezuela: The Real Enemy

By Pasqualina Curcio on August 17, 2020

https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/08/venezuela-the-real-enemy/

We began to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. imperialism in 1999 soon after Hugo Chavez came to power. From that moment on, they declared themselves our enemy, framing this as a war, not a conventional war but a war nonetheless. At the start, they were disguised with the masks of the meritocracy bureaucrats of Petróleos de Venezuela, the Federación de Cámaras y Asociaciones de Comercio y Producción), and the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela, and the political elements of the opposition. Today, as they despair, their masks have fallen.

The original cause of this conflict was our decision to be free and independent and to advance toward socialism of the 21st Century, an alternative model to capitalism. It is a recognized part of this sovereign decision that we as a people shall control all the riches of resources that imperialism is seeking in order to recover some of the scope that it has been losing in the geopolitical world for decades now: gold, oil, minerals of all kinds; in addition there is our enviable strategic geographical location.

Recognizing our real enemy in this unconventional warfare is strategically necessary in order to ensure victory and the peaceful and democratic continuity of the revolutionary process, particularly now on the eve of parliamentary elections.

Those who, with a shameless and stateless attitude, tour the world asking for an increase in the economic blockade to limit the importation of food, medicine, repair parts, machinery, and supplies for national production, are enemies of the people. Those who have taken money from Washington to promote acts of violence in the streets and who have encouraged hate among Venezuelans, to the extreme of burning alive their countrymen for being Chavistas. Those who have signed contracts employing mercenaries to kill Venezuelans like the mercenaries of SilverCorp, of Gideon. Those whose pretext of humanitarian aid in January of 2019 was used to justify an invasion of our sacred territory at the Colombian border. They are the monopolies that, following the economic warfare manuals, hid and hoarded food and medicine, making people stand in long lines while those so called “political leaders” deceived their followers in December 2015, promising them a “last line.” These are also enemies.

The enemies of peace are those who manipulatively speak of the Bolivarian Revolution as a dictatorship, while they call for abstaining from voting which is an anti-democratic attitude. Those who, without proof, have cried fraud about every electoral result that has not been in their favor in the 24 elections that have taken place during 22 years. Those who demanded changes in the administration of the electoral system and nevertheless have just signaled that they won’t be participating in the next election on December 6. Those who on April 11, 2002, in the setting of a coup d’état and kidnapping of our Constitutional President Hugo Chávez, renounced our liberator Simón Bolívar, committing the shameful act of hiding his portrait in the presidential palace – they do not love their country or their people. They are the same as those who today disrespect our glorious national armed forces, offending and attempting to blackmail them with so-called promises of amnesty if they will legitimize a possible disruption in the orderly constitutional succession of power.

Our enemies are those who have attacked out currency, the bolivar, beginning in 2013, manipulating its value more than 300 billion percent via web portals, so that it has gone from 8.26 bolivars to the dollar to 300 billion bolivars to the dollar. Those same people who have used this weapon of war to cause inflation of all prices of 12,493,965,695% between January 2013 and May 2020, and to contract national production more than 50%. But, at this point, those who refuse to recognize this attack and who attempt to explain and cover up the hyperinflation with a veil of monetarist theory are also enemies. Those who celebrate new attacks on our sovereignty daily at 9am and 1pm are, also, enemies.

All of these are no more than mouthpieces for the real enemy who – and let us not make any mistake about this – are not Donald Trump who is also a spokesman, just as Barack Obama, George Bush, and Bill Clinton were. The real enemy is imperialism, constituted of the great multi-national corporations, financial and communications conglomerates, the owners of the Federal Reserve of the U.S., and those of the World Economic Forum of Davos. These are the great capitalist powers that feel threatened by the possibility of a just and egalitarian model, and that hate the word socialism. They are the same as those, represented by Truman as lead spokesman in 1947, of the Containment Strategy and the Cold War against the socialist hopes and aspirations of the Soviet Union.

The real enemies are the designers of the Conservative Revolution with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as figureheads, who in the 1980s established neoliberalism in Latin America, filling our people with hunger, poverty, and misery, who dismantled the Welfare state in Europe, who confessed to doing even the impossible in attempting to destroy the Bolshevik Revolution.

It is these capitalist forces, and not by chance, that were behind the coups against Federico Chaves (Paraguay, 1954), Jacobo Árbenz (Guatemala, 1954), Juan Bosch (República Dominicana, 1963), João Goulart (Brazil, 1963), Salvador Allende (Chile 1973), María Estela Martínez de Perón (Argentina, 1976), Juan José Torres (Bolivia, 1971), Manuel Zelaya (Honduras, 2009). It is they who invaded Panama in 1989, who carried out Plan Condor, who supported the Contras in Nicaragua in the 80s. Those who ordered the assassination of Ché Guevara in Higuera Bolivia in 1967. Those who for 60 years have maintained a criminal blockade of the Cuban people and for 40 years of the people of Iran those are the real enemies.

This is not just any enemy that the people of Venezuela, with all our enviable riches, have had to confront since we declared to the world our intention to be sovereign and socialist in 1999. In these 22 years of revolution we have seen what they are capable of doing, to what depth of criminality they will sink in attacking us without caring about the suffering of women, children, and elders.

The unity of the revolutionary forces is essential now more than ever, in these moments of assaults and menaces by U.S. imperialism, as is mass participation by our patriotic people at the polls in the coming elections.

Let us not see specters where they do not exist. Let us not lose perspective or get distracted. The real enemy is imperialism. We should concentrate all our forces on defeating it, in recognizing that the attack on the bolivar currency is the most powerful and effective weapon that has been employed economically against Venezuelans. We should do everything possible to destroy this weapon. We must concentrate on circumventing and dealing with the commercial and financial blockade instead of using it as an excuse. The Russians, Cubans, and Iranians have a lot to teach us.

The only way to defeat the real enemy is to deepen the Bolivarian Revolution and this occurs when we, day by day, in all our areas, decisions, and actions, ask the unfailing question about them Comandante Hugo Chávez: “And where is the Socialism there?” This should be our guide to defeating the real enemy.