By Andrew Martin

The world has been confronted by extraordinary scenes of the U.S once again playing supercop. After bombing Caracas—killing 80 Venezuelans—and kidnapping the Venezuelan president and his wife, Donald Trump said to the media that “we’re going to run the country [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”. He has imprisoned the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, at a Metropolitan Detention Centre in New York. Maduro was shackled in handcuffs, blindfolded and led by agents of the DEA.

A newly unsealed US justice department indictment accuses Maduro of running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by an extensive drug-trafficking operation that flooded the US with thousands of tons of cocaine. It remains to be seen how many world leaders will follow along with this brazen imperialist propaganda.

The capture of Venezuelan president Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores is a major blow to the labour movement and struggle for socialism globally, and a setback to Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. The ruthlessness and rapidity of the capture are shocking as is its audacious flouting of international law. But to anyone who understands the bloodlust of the U.S empire it will not come as a surprise. There is one person, who if he was alive today, would almost certainly not be surprised.

In 2009, a Colombian journalist asked the late Hugo Chavez, former president of Venezuela if he was “paranoid about the U.S” invading Venezuela? Hugo Chavez had come under immense pressure from within Venezuela and from without by a relentless campaign of vilification and blind hatred towards the Bolivarian Revolution he was the foremost leader of. Venezuela has a free press, which, like in much of the rest of Latin America, its U.S aligned capitalist class used to portray Chavez as a tyrant and a dictator.

The journalist asked Chavez why the U.S would invade Venezuela. His response was as timely then as it is now.

You don’t see it? You don’t see the threat the U.S poses to us? I’ll tell you the most important reason why. Here, we have the largest reserves of oil on this planet. Here in Venezuela we have oil for more than 100 years … The most important reason the U.S wants to put a government here that is subordinate to it, to the empire, as they had for a long time, is oil.

The journalist, condescendingly, presses the point: “Are you paranoid about the U.S?” Chavez responds:

Not at all. I am just being realistic. There are many others you could’ve asked that question to, but they are dead. Ask Jacobo Arbenz that question, who was president of Guatemala when I was born … just because he wanted to carry out an agrarian reform. The United States invaded and overthrew him. You could ask that question to João Goulart, the Brazilian, the United States overthrew him. You could also ask that question to Salvador Allende, the martyred president. You could ask that question to Juan Bosch, the former Dominican president overthrown by U.S invasion. You could ask that question to my own general, Omar Torrijos, assassinated by the CIA … And many others. It’s not paranoia, it’s the truth.

Indeed, Chavez could’ve listed many other examples. Conservative estimates are that the U.S has invaded 70 countries since its inception as a nation state; at least 41 were in Latin America. These examples do not include failed invasions such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, in which the U.S was defeated. If a broader definition of military intervention is used, then the U.S has used military force hundreds of times and used covert operations thousands of times the world over to destabilise governments that don’t comply to its will. It has its tentacles wrapped tightly around the globe and holds the world in a death-grip.

The Social Base of the Bolivarian Revolution

When Chavez passed in 2013, it was a major blow to Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. From humble beginnings as the son of schoolteachers in the regional town of Sabaneta, Barinas, Chavez became a military officer and instructor at the Venezuelan Military Academy in Caracas, later becoming lieutenant colonel. After being imprisoned for fomenting an uprising and attempting to seize power, Chavez became immediately popular with the poor and oppressed in Venezuela who had lived a life on the margins in barrios without access to even the most basic of services.

Chavez was released after a campaign calling for amnesty for Chavez and his comrades, the members of the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (MBR-200), who had organised within the military and were radicalised by the social conditions of Venezuela. The movement was inspired by the revolutionary campaigns of the country’s founder Simón Bolívar, who had sought to unite all of Latin America against colonialism. 

Once released, Chavez’ speeches eviscerated the oligarchs of Venezuela who leeched off its oil wealth. The Puntofijo pact meant workers were locked out of the political system with power shared by arrangement between two bourgeois parties: Acción Democrática (AD) and COPEI (Social Christian Party). To make matters worse, the main trade union federation, the CTV (Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela), was notoriously corrupt. Workers had no voice at all.

Neoliberal reforms exacerbated the collapse of agriculture from the 1970s onwards, leading to mass migration to city centres (mostly Caracas) where secure employment was scarce. Deprived of land, an underclass of former campesinos grew into a reserve army of the unemployed, housed around the hills of Caracas, overlooking the riches of the glittering steel and concrete city below. Meanwhile, it’s ruling class enjoyed trips to Miami and lived in gated estates. Venezuela’s oil was sold for as little as $9 a barrel, with the U.S consuming two oil tankers worth a day. The majority of the eastern seaboard in the U.S was dependent on Venezuelan oil and petroleum distribution.

Prior to Chavez, 80% of Venezuela’s population lived below the poverty line in the most extreme states of desperation, with non-existent medical care, and with low rates of literacy. There was a noticeable rise in violent crime and homicides — roughly doubling over the decade in the 1990s and trending upwards. Something had to change. It did.

The Tectonic Plates of the Bolivarian Revolution

The extreme contradictions of Venezuelan society and the hard yoke of underdevelopment, combined with the brazen looting of the country’s natural resources, gave rise to the Bolivarian Revolution. For many years Venezuela’s lack of functioning civil institutions and the absence of a broad progressive left with mass influence or strong trade unions meant that most leftists overlooked it as a possible location for a revolution. But revolutions seldom announce themselves in advance; especially not to those who have fixed notions of how they should occur.

The Bolivarian revolution is of major importance: it was the first push back against the whole neoliberal period and struck at the heart of U.S imperialism by reclaiming the sovereignty of a country that had been plundered for hundreds of years. It encompasses a whole generation of struggle of millions of people, workers, street vendors, farmers, oil technicians, caregivers and soldiers – all struggling to chart an independent path from the dictates of Washington. This was the first major push back for the global movement of the working class since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Bolivarian victory meant that capitalism could no longer claim to be triumphant and that socialism could prevail, even against the toughest and most ruthless of enemies. It proved that, even after the political suffocation that followed the September 11 Twin Towers attack, there was hope for the workers struggle – revolution was back. And despite what Western propaganda says about Venezuela, its Bolivarian revolution delivered results.

Chavez’ 1998 election victory heralded a shift in Latin America – a wave of left-wing movements led to the ousting of right-wing governments from Bolivia to Brazil and Argentina. This helped buy Venezuela some time, even if these movements were stunted or waylaid. Faced with immense economic problems, the Chavez government renationalised Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the state-owned oil company that had been corporatised and partially privatised.

This enabled a flow of funds into Venezuela’s social missions such as the medical mission Barrio Adentro and the education project, Mission Robinson. As a participant of a brigade in 2005 I met people well into their 70s who had never seen a doctor before and were finally receiving medical care. I met people in their twenties who were only then able to complete their high school studies. The revolution meant a myriad of opportunities were opened up to millions of people to enjoy life in a way they had never thought possible. Extreme rates of poverty fell significantly. 

The revolution promoted concepts of “participatory and protagonistic democracy” through community councils (consejos comunales) and communes, aiming to give grassroots groups direct control over local budgets and projects. In 2023, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez stated that there were more than 54,000 Communal Councils operating throughout Venezuela.

The revolution provided fresh drinking water to three million people for the first time ever. In the first two years of Chavez government more houses were built than in the previous twenty. With the launch of the Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela in 2011, three million houses were built by 2020 helping to overcome a long legacy of severe housing deficit and informal urban housing conditions.

Land reforms redistributed land to peasant communities and, via the transformative cooperative movement, have provided Venezuela with food security, enabling it to weather the worst of the sanctions the U.S have imposed on it. 

Most of all, the Bolivarian revolution has given the people of Venezuela something the U.S cannot easily take from it – dignity. For hundreds of years, indigenous communities, Afro-Venezuelans, women and the urban poor were treated like trash. They now have control over their lives and an active say in the communities they live in. The Bolivarian revolution’s vision of anti-imperialist resistance and Latin-American unity cannot be erased in the blink of an eye.

We all have a role to play

Revolutions are made by human beings, who can be brilliant, flawed, hopeless and everything in between. Revolutions do not proceed in a linear direction. They face dark moments, regressions and setbacks. In the case of Venezuela, almost all of them are directly attributable to direct attacks of U.S imperialism.

U.S aggression against Venezuela has been unrelenting. Chavez himself was kidnapped in 2002 by pro-U.S forces and taken to the island of La Orchilla by helicopter. It was only after the actions of lower ranking military officers combined with the mass actions of the civilian population that Chavez was rescued and returned to power. This marked a shift in power in Venezuela that gave the Bolivarian revolution a socialist character, deepening its radicalisation, but also raising the stakes in its quest for survival.

Having failed to remove Chavez by force, the capitalist class in Venezuela sought to strangle the country by cutting off its supply of oil. The oil-lockout in 2003 was a dark moment for Venezuela. Its oil refineries were sabotaged, its control systems remotely shut off by a U.S. based company. Operations in refineries, oil fields, and export terminals were severely disrupted. Production plummeted from roughly 3 million barrels per day to less than 100,000 barrels per day at its worst point.

The strike devastated Venezuela’s economy: GDP contracted by nearly 30% in 2003, causing severe shortages and inflation. The government used the military and loyal PDVSA employees to gradually restart operations, with help from foreign advisers and workers. By February 2003, the lockout had collapsed without achieving its goal of removing Chávez. The government emerged on a stronger footing to implement its social programs and deepen its movement of communes.

But more hardships were to follow. Oil price crashes, sanctions and cases of corruption hampered the durability of the revolution’s gains. When oil prices dropped sharply in 2014–2015, government revenues collapsed, causing shortages, hyperinflation, and fiscal crises. Venezuela’s GDP shrank by more than 80% between 2013 and 2021. It’s economy has since stabilised. 

Despite two decades of extensive U.S. sanctions aimed at crippling its economy, the country has found ways to adapt: oil continues to flow through alternative markets, communities have developed creative survival strategies, and people have navigated shortages and hardship with remarkable resilience. It is precisely this resilience that the Trump administration has sought to undermine. Its failure to do so has led it to take more desperate measures.

The interdiction of tankers and murder of innocent fishermen at sea are all brazen violations of international law, but Trump has gotten away with it and he will get away with much worse if we don’t rise up and take action. Trump will not be stopped by solemn speeches at the U.N or by diplomats in the corridors of power. His propaganda, lies and brutal thug-like actions can only be stopped by action.

The kidnapping of Maduro, his wife and the missile attacks against Venezuela’s defenses are a dark chapter in the history of the Bolivarian revolution. Maduro has been embattled throughout his entire presidency; there has not been a moment’s rest, no wave of revolution that could ease the pressure. Political polarisation is unavoidable, given Venezuela’s relative isolation and the balancing act required to defend sovereignty: operating in a world market dominated by capital, without letting capital capture the state; maintaining democratic processes while keeping a U.S. aligned bourgeois opposition subordinated; making tactical concessions without capitulating, recognising that sanctions come regardless, while still denying Washington easy pretexts. These contradictions create constant openings for the U.S. to covertly intervene in Venezuela’s affairs. The capitalist media globally, funded by billionaries, can claim Venezuela is a repressive regime by mere assertion. They are all too happy to repeat the imperialist propaganda that Maduro is connected to some fictional drug cartel or whatever else they wish to fabricate.

Our role is to push back against all of this, not just because U.S intervention is wrong. The Bolivarian revolution is too important, it cannot be allowed to become confined to our memories. The Bolivarian revolution, Socialism of the 21^st Century must survive, because it means life, dignity and hope for millions of people. When I visited Venezuela a group of Mexican people who came to listen to one of Chavez speeches was chanting “mexicanos y venezolanos un solo pueblo!” (Mexicans and Venezuelans are one people!)

For the vast majority of the world—its billions of poor and oppressed— the fact that we are one is a fundamental truth the imperialists of the world want to destroy, as they carve up the world’s resources for their own interests. They will lie, they will cheat, they will steal and they will murder—why should we believe anything they say about Venezuela? We must resist.