Translated "Avante !" article by Luis Carapinha, Member of the PCP International Department
Venezuela has become news again within the dominant media network. This time, the motive of this commotion is not the worsening of its president’s health condition, which some free USA media and similar have insisted to be very serious, practically a terminal state. No, after all, it is resumed on the opposition candidate choice, who will, together with Chavez, dispute the presidential elections next Oct. 7th (believing the Venezuelan president, at last, will survive the most demolishing medical prognosis…). The elect, Capriles Radonski, is presented as a strong young man , nearing 40’s, all for progress and democracy, but in reality, a well-known right-wing local personality. Among his credits, is the enthusiastic participation in the failed fascist coup, in 2002. The bourgeoisie’s whole anxious rejoicing concerning Capriles is understandable. Huger than the smashing ignorance on the Venezuelan coarse and reality is the deep- rooted hate the bourgeoisie nurtures towards the Bolivarian Revolution and its leader, president Hugo Chavez.
Class hatred, which naturally, is not deprived from its own reasons. It is convenient to recall the outstanding Bolivarian electoral victory, achieved in 1998, as the beginning of the ascent to power of a diverse group of democratic, popular, nationalist and left-wing forces - and an also direct result of hard popular battles of insurrectional nature, as demonstrated by the Bolivia’s highlighted example - which allowed a sensitive change of the force correlation within Latin America, favourable unto the anti-imperialist forces and opened up new spaces - and challenges - to the progressive and revolutionary field advance towards the path of development and social changes. By meeting the pioneer Cuban revolution’s example and solidarity.
All this regards the taking place of the XI ALBA Summit ( Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America), which took place in Caracas, on the 4 and 5th February last. Since the previous head of states’ summit of the organization, which currently congregates eight Caribbean, Central and South America countries, more than a year had passed. The great national bourgeoisies and imperialism have worked a lot together in order to silence and fail this process, which draws up as an anti-imperialist and solidarity cooperation nucleus of the integration dynamics, which plough the region’s path. ALBA’s constitution by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004, which precedes the defeat-setting of the ALBA’s project sponsored by the USA’s imperialism, a dividing line upon which new articulation dynamics and regional integration such as the Petrocaribe, UNASUR and , more recently, the CELAC. The latest years’ coup plots within Latin America, aimed at the Alliance’s member governments. The most striking case, having been the Honduras coup in 2009, which had as result the withdrawal of the country from the ALBA. The coup attempts in Bolivia (2008) and the Ecuador (2010), both ALBA members, were nevertheless, defeated.
During the Summit, which currently took place in Caracas, three new states have been invited to join the ALBA, through a special statute : the Haiti, Santa Lucia and the Suriname. The anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist nature of the taken decisions at the political, social and economic levels, highlighting the creation of ALBA’s economic space and the project of common currency extension, the Sucre, have an impact in a disturbed moment in which the world is confronted with the reality of the capitalist crisis deepening and the imperialism aggressive escalade.
Within a diversity framework, in which contradictory elements and dynamics coexist, ALBA’s example is shaped as a class struggle stage which intrinsically glides over Latin America’s sovereign emancipation, progress and transformation processes. It’s historical destiny is in the open, but its existence and advance renders trust unto the world-wide resistance and struggle.
