USA-Venezuela Crisis: Among the White House arrogance, Miraflores demagoguery and imperialist brawls (English)

El Libertario newspaper

Data and facts deny the claim that the "imperialist" interests were threatened in Venezuela with the arrival of the so-called Bolivarian government. As reality shows, the presidencies of Hugo Chavez and Maduro have deepened the extractive role assigned to the country by capitalist globalization, which together with financial and speculative capital, continue to earn big profits in Venezuela. Just two examples. The first a looks at the report Chevron: The Bolivarian connection (in English at http://www.mediafire.com/download/a4hn36jffk7c3lj/ChevronVzla_english.pdf), expossing the fabulous expansion of this US transnational under the so-called "Socialism of the XXI Century". The second is evident in what the "fracking" issues, denounced by the president of PDVSA as a "weapon of capitalism" but unabashedly used in Venezuela by state oil (in Spanish see http://bit.ly/1E4AZoi and http://bit.ly/1l0RBr2).

The US government uses the excuse of human rights to punish officials of a regime that is diplomatically inconvenient, while restored relations with the government of Cuba. Both manouvers being both played almost simultaneous and both sought to please various factions of ruling power in U $ A. Such sanctions prompted the Venezuelan official response, requiring visas for all American origin people trying to visit the country (as Brazil and Bolivia settled before) and the entry prohibition of some US officials. The replica of Obama administration was oversized: Declaring Venezuela as "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy for the United States", activating mechanisms under the  International Emergency Economic Powers Law, whereby the president can impose economic sanctions without the approval of Congress. In recent years, USA has qualified Iran, Burma, Sudan, Russia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Belarus and North Korea in similar ways. A whole hyperbole that not even the American Chief believes. Moreover, sanctions are announced for low profile figures of the Venezuelan state bypassing the most relevant.

As Latin American libertarians we can not forget all imperialist intervention initiatives undertaken by the United States against the countries of the region from the S. XIX. Each and every one of them - military invasions with subsequent territorial occupations, coups, financing paramilitary compulsive collections of alleged debts, among the most serious - have originated a loud and clear rejection from anarchism. The same repudiation would be if such situations happend in the future against any area of ​​Latin America.

The Venezuelan government and its apparatus of national and international propaganda claim that this sanctions constitutes a "declaration of war" against Venezuela and is the prelude to a very unlikely "American military attack". However, despite this alarmist forecast, Miraflores takes no consistent political-diplomatic action according with what it preaches, the split of relations, closure of their embassies and consulates in US territory or the suspension of bilateral business. Obama said that trade ties, which is well known and documented so large they are (in Spanish see http://bbc.in/1EyLWDP) is not interrupted.

Indeed, the reaction of the White House is profitable for Nicolas Maduro, at a time when the Venezuelan president has the lowest rates of popularity since 1999, the country suffers the highest inflation in the world and is being implemented a progressively economic package unloading the cost of the crisis in the population. Maduro use the argument of "imperialist invasion" as an excuse to increase repression to silence any dissent and implement structural adjustment, masked with anti-imperialist rhetoric to warm the political theater and false polarization, making time to try to convince the increasingly distrustful inherited Chavez about the benefits of a project that claims to be socialist but dragging the worst vices of his opponents assumptions clearly state capitalism popular support. At the request of the enabling "anti-imperialist" law to the National Assembly underlies the probability intensify measures left on the backs of the majority the weight of the crisis, overlapping trasdeclaraciones type Cipriano Castro [economic minister] urgent decisions topping national assets such as financial swap to materialize with the gold of the Public Treasury (in Spanish see http://bit.ly/1xc0d1q).

Venezuela suffers imperial meddling, silenced by the Bolivarian propaganda apparatus but clear whoever wants to see them: the handover of territory to Chinese capital for his outrageous exploitation and the exorbitant arms purchases to the Russian Federation are two examples. In that same vein, I would not be surprised if after this fuss of embassies and foreign ministries, Washington preventive response to the action carried on several fronts in Latin America its potential adversaries imperial hegemony is concealed. The real understanding of the current dynamics of global capitalism involves understanding that while the US is the center of the network flows political, economic and financial power, that role is fulfilled amid tensions with other large states aspiring to the throne or at least a bigger slice in the pie of oppression and exploitation.

Moreover, and as we have always done from El Libertario we denounce to this sector of the opposition that welcomes any initiative from the Yankee government and aspires to its most active and direct involvement in the Venezuelan situation [militar intervention]. Given this and other proposals that are build on the statist tradition our choice is clear: we reiterate the need to build a social libertarian alternative facing not only the Bolivarian authoritarian capitalism but to the restructuring of the traditional political parties - also pro-capitalist - and its cheats games with the electoral representation excuse.

Colectivo Editor de El Libertario – Caracas, March 11,  2015

[The original text in Spanish in http://periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com/2015/03/crisis-ua-venezuela-entre-la.html. See also another recent statement by El Libertario translated into English in http://periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com/2015/02/venezuela-2015-crisis-no-to-military.html.]

[Thanks to Pablo Heraklio for this translation!]