By ANISIO PIRES*
The quantity and “quality” of things said about Venezuela always surprises. Often without knowing what to say, we are either outraged or laugh out loud at the absurd stories that are believed.
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The quantity and “quality” of things said about Venezuela are always surprising. Often, without knowing what to say, we are outraged or laugh out loud at the absurd stories that people believe. However, the matter is serious and dangerous. On July 29 and 30, 27 people were murdered during “peaceful” protests that were “protesting” the election results. All those who died supported the government; none were members of the “peaceful opposition.” Given that the Bolivarian government, like all the rest of the world, is in command of the military and police forces, how can we explain that the “dictatorship” did not react to avenge these deaths?
Talking about the repeated lies that become truth (Goebbels) is useless, because the mere mention of “Venezuela” blocks the value of this old lesson about manipulation. It’s like a smoker and a cigarette. The person knows it’s bad for them, but because of the addiction, they continue. The “addiction” of attacking Venezuela is more powerful than the truth, and in the age of networks and algorithms, ideas to prevent deception hardly penetrate psychological walls.
Repeating that Venezuela “has problems like any other country” doesn’t explain anything either. I live on Margarita Island (Nueva Esparta state), which has some advantages but also disadvantages compared to the rest of the country. Other than that, everything is normal. I invite you to come and see for yourself, at any time and in any city you choose, whether the interested media is lying or not.
The country is at peace. It is false that there is civil war-like violence. In the past, we had a lot of criminal violence. Now, thanks to security programs, it is a thing of the past. Paradise? No, but far from hell. Preventive policing prevails, which does not eliminate confrontations with organized crime. Cities are divided into “peace quadrants” by geographic area. The population receives the contact telephone number for their quadrant and, when something real or suspicious happens, they call it. I have used this service on two occasions and the response was quick.
Important detail. Indiscriminate raids on innocent people, as in Brazil, do not occur here. In 25 years of revolution, there has never been a tragedy like that of musician Evaldo dos Santos Rosa, his wife and 7-year-old son. In 2019, in Rio, they were shot more than 80 times. The military “mistaken” them for criminals.
The sad Brazilian phenomenon of thousands of people sleeping on the streets does not exist here. One or two people in specific territories, but they are few. It is true that the US blockade has caused many public services to decline, but the issue of housing has become a matter of honor for the government. The free housing program (Great Housing Mission Venezuela) started in 2011 with Hugo Chávez and has never stopped. With a population of almost 30 million, more than five million free, quality homes have already been delivered.
The inhumane situation of people picking “food” from the trash is a rarity and the phenomenon of chasing trucks full of bones in Venezuela has never existed! fake news The absurdity of “people eating cats and dogs” is pure evil. Meanwhile, when it comes to South Korea, “capitalist Korea”, where eating dogs is an ancient custom, nothing is said.
Only in 2027 will this custom be made illegal by a newly passed law. Due to international pressure, the Korean Ministry of Agriculture has proposed paying “compensation” to farmers (from 170 to 450 dollars) for each dog not slaughtered. However, farmers consider this amount too low. They demand $1.500 to keep the little animals alive. Nobody knows that in Venezuela, despite everything, there is a program created in 2014 to protect animals, “Snowy Mission”. And to show how stupid this is fake news, it is important to inform that many people have already been arrested for animal cruelty. In “humanist” Korea, killing dogs is profitable, in “bloodthirsty” Venezuela, it lands you in jail.
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The Venezuelan people have been through many difficulties, which are obviously unequal (not everyone has suffered) because their society is still capitalist and wants to transition to socialism with many contradictions.
The phenomenon of Venezuelan migration as “proof of tyranny” is part of the perverse blockade of the country. It was accompanied by psychological campaigns to make people see things as even worse. Manipulating the real difficulties with neurotic messages (“this country has no way out”, “this country is horrible”, etc.), the right has been promoting migration, saying that the country “is no longer good” because the “Chavistas” have taken over.
It is open to criticism that the government does not always disclose data on the country's reality, although it seems reasonable that no country, human group or individual should reveal its weaknesses in the face of an enemy, even less so if the enemy wants to destroy it. Despite this, information is emerging that allows us to understand the “war wounds” as the government calls them. In 2019, the report by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR-Washington) had a suggestive title: “Economic sanctions as collective punishment: the case of Venezuela”. Using data from institutions not linked to the State, the report revealed that between 2017 and 2018 alone the estimated number of deaths as a result of US blockade was more than 40 thousand people.
Despite these painful wounds, the government was able to react, the best proof of this being its response during the Covid-19 pandemic. The measures promptly adopted by Venezuela resulted in the lowest mortality rates in Latin America. Let us remember the gesture of solidarity by President Nicolás Maduro, sending oxygen to save lives in Manaus while the genocidal maniac spoke of a “little flu.”
In his annual message to the country (January 2024), the President revealed to the world some of the suffering behind migration: “the nutritional deficit of Venezuelan families reached 35% in 2017”. By 2024, thanks to the government’s food initiatives, the deficit had been reduced to 6,5%. The food production policy implemented contributed to this. From a Venezuela that imported nearly 80% of the food it consumed, in 2024, despite the US blockade, we went from 100% of our food supply to domestic production.
But if things are not that bad, the question remains: why did the extremist opposition get 43% of the vote in last July's elections (which the right says were rigged)? There are several reasons.
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On the one hand, there is the issue of salaries. Surveys show that the population expects the President to resolve the issue. From the highest minimum wage on the continent during the Chávez era, it is now one of the lowest. The government has so far failed to provide the increases that the population wants, while at the same time claiming that the economy has been performing well (thirteen quarters of continuous growth), which partly fuels dissatisfaction. However, low salaries alone do not explain how an unknown candidate, lacking charisma, in poor health, who barely campaigned, managed to win the far right this vote.
Oscar Shémel, director of the Hinterlaces research institute, talks about the “neurotic vote”. According to him, the war against Venezuela is not only political, economic and military, but multidimensional, where the communicative factor, the “cognitive war”, plays a fundamental role. The incessant attack via social networks prevents people from thinking, confuses them, disconnecting them from reality. The result is anxiety, anger, frustration and hatred, feelings that the media has managed to direct against the one who has become the object of people’s neurosis, President Nicolás Maduro.
In an irrational phenomenon similar to that of Argentina, which elected Javier Milei, a portion of the population voted to remove Maduro once and for all, no matter what. “Let’s put an end to this once and for all.” What Oscar Shémel failed to do in this analysis was to include the flaws (bureaucracy, corruption and deficiencies in public services) as elements that also contributed to fueling the neurosis.
It is understood that many of these failures that generate discomfort among the population have been going on for a long time, in a confusing mix of lack of political sensitivity on the part of certain leaders and officials, anti-values and counter-revolutionary actions by people who purposely act against the government, damaging the image of the revolution. The government is aware of these problems, but it is not clear whether it has difficulty finding solutions or whether it underestimates their negative impact on the population. It is as if confidence in the indisputable virtues and strengths of the revolution generates a kind of “revolutionary conformism”.
By reaffirming Venezuela’s sovereignty and independence, the Bolivarian Revolution has been making an effort to revalue “The Venezuelan Affirmative” (Augusto Mijares). The problem is that the need to reaffirm national patriotic sentiment and love for the country is not perceived or given due importance, in the excellence and good functioning of everything that is done, especially in public services and the country’s infrastructure. Being able to take a test, get an X-ray or get medication today and not next week or month makes the difference between revolutionary humanism and bureaucracy. Why should the needy people that everyone claims as the “priority” have to be patient and wait?
To make things clear, imagine a Chinese citizen leaving one of the spectacular high-speed train stations and being approached by a right-wing political agitator to speak ill of the country’s “dictatorship.” This citizen, who has just had a rewarding futuristic experience, will look this agitator in the face and ignore him. My fellow Chavistas, for various reasons, seem to underestimate the importance of these concrete experiences for people, sometimes expecting an almost religious support for the revolutionary cause.
Time and again they forget that it was Hugo Chávez himself who said: “Socialism must be humanly rewarding.” We, who are so proud of the resistance of the Venezuelan people, must think in terms of “strategic love” and convince ourselves that the more rewarding the people’s lives are, the stronger Venezuela’s example will be in the world as a rebellious, free, sovereign and independent homeland.
The human genius of Commander Chávez was in this special gift of seeing both beyond (world geopolitics) and below (the daily dramas of the people). Let us try to be like Hugo Chávez.
The existing problems are a concern for historical leaders such as Elías Jaua, who was Chávez’s vice president. In a recent interview, he spoke about “the necessary corrections” to better serve the people. The issue was even a topic of debate during the last electoral campaign by a new movement within Chavismo, the “Movimiento Futuro”. Composed of several ministers and leaders of the revolution, its main spokesperson, the current Minister of Education, Hector Rodriguez, was very explicit: “We do not intend to ask permission or forgiveness for criticizing what needs to be criticized.”
Even President Maduro himself has complained about local problems that were easy to solve, but after a long time he had to solve them because the intermediate authorities and teams did not do so. The president has been criticizing what he calls “minimalism.” This is the attitude of certain leaders and officials who do the minimum, just to fulfill their tasks.
4.
At this moment, assemblies are taking place all over the country, bringing together the five generations involved in the revolution (from the guerrillas of the 60s to the youngest kids), aiming at a series of short, medium and long-term transformations, highlighting the need to build a new, more efficient and dynamic State. In Gramscian terms, the President reflected that, after 25 years of revolution, the old State was not completely dying and that the new one seemed not to want to be born, since until now only a few germs had appeared.
Nicolás Maduro proposes to give new impetus over the next six years to this New State of Social and Popular character towards the “Communal State”. More direct democracy, based on decision-making in the spirit of the Participatory Budget (Maduro Program + Nº 61). The president wants more than 70% of the public budget to be delivered directly to the People’s Power. This is reminiscent of The State and the Revolution of Vladimir Lenin and the project of returning to society the original power that was appropriated by the State throughout history.
Although interesting, we see this proposal with “the optimism of will and the pessimism of reason” (Gramsci). Twelve years ago, Chávez himself promoted a shake-up in the revolution, the “Coup de Timão”, which had as its most important idea the “Commune or nothing”. Twelve years later, although there is talk of the numerical increase in communes, its impact on the long-term, stable solution to people’s daily problems is not perceived. The transfer of resources will bring new contradictions and selfish disputes because the “spirit of the commune” is still very embryonic, which according to Chávez himself “is much more important, at this moment, than the Commune itself”.
Without “communal culture,” popular power will hardly be able to become the collective master of the State. This political and cultural pedagogy has been neglected, as revealed by the housing projects delivered throughout the country. In most of them, anti-capitalist values are still very present, to the point that in the last elections, dissociated and ungrateful people demonstrated against the government despite having received comfortable homes for free. The syndrome of the “right-wing poor.”
These reflections on the humanist Bolivarian Venezuela that we defend are heretical. Despite the high voter turnout for the far right, few people in the Bolivarian vanguard speak about the issue. One of the country’s most important intellectuals, Luis Britto Garcia, made brief comments. He pointed out that the abstention rate was higher and described it as “a negative vote whose meaning we must interpret.” Contrasting the results in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, Luis Britto stated: “Our socialist political system has produced splendid results that we have commented on and celebrated. At the same time, it has shown internal vulnerabilitiesthe unacceptable ones”.
In 2004, in an election that Hugo Chávez won by more than five million (the right wing won more than four), Fidel Castro commented to his friend: “Chávez, there can’t be four million oligarchs in Venezuela.” Five years later (2009), in another election that Hugo Chávez also won by more than six million (the right wing won more than five), the late journalist José Vicente Rangel, who was Chávez’s vice president, paraphrased Fidel in an article: “Five million oligarchs?” José Vicente Rangel warned at the time: “Something is not going well.”
In the recent elections, three things became very clear: (i). The 52% popular support for the Bolivarian Revolution is indisputable; (ii). There are no 43% oligarchs; (iii). There are things that are still not going well.
For a revolution in power, besieged from without and within, the danger of these vulnerabilities is called fascism. Given the proliferation of fascist movements around the world, many comrades in the struggle have been repeating, as a sign of firmness and radicalism, a phrase that has become popular: “Fascism is not discussed. Fascism is fought.” The question is, how?
On the military front, Russia in Ukraine is setting a good example. On the political front, Venezuela and other countries have been implementing a set of legal measures to prevent fascists from taking advantage of the rule of law to promote hatred and violence, including the use of social media. As the an influencer Brazilian Felipe Netto, the profit that feeds the algorithms that promote hate can only be addressed with firm laws that regulate their operation.
On a social level, things are more complex. The material and spiritual needs that capitalism does not satisfy and that it promotes through consumer propaganda generate permanent dissatisfaction and frustration that seem to be underestimated by the avant-garde. In the 1930s, when Leon Trotsky tried to warn about the fascist danger in Germany, he stated: “If the Communist Party is a party of ‘revolutionary hope’, Fascism, as a mass movement, is then a party of “counterrevolutionary despair.”
The Bolivarian vanguard seems not to be valuing the weight of this neurotic despair in the population, neglecting the quality and effectiveness of the responses, thinking that denouncing the false and hypocritical discourse of the extreme right will be enough to win the support of the population. In Podcast of President Maduro with Diego Ruzzarin and Juan Carlos Monedero, the latter mentioned two lessons: (a) fascism wins when the left divides; (b) “at the height of fascism there is always a mistake on the part of the left that we did not do our tasks well”.
Will Chavismo be doing its job? Let us answer with another question: Having discarded the oligarchic minority and other wealthy and middle-class sectors with a lot of money and obscene interests, why do more than 30% of voters (including those who abstained) not identify with Bolívar’s generous idea of building a society that offers people “the greatest possible amount of happiness”? We are still under threat. In the answer to this question, we, the people and the vanguard, can find together the key to making the Bolivarian Revolution “irreversible,” as advocated by the young congressman Robert Serra, who was cowardly assassinated by the right.
These are our truths about the real Venezuela. Views, experiences and constructive criticism in defense of its revolution that above all fights for life.
*Anisio Pires is a professor of sociology at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela (UBV).
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