Role of Workers’ Productive Councils in Venezuela’s Economic Recovery—Interview with Manuel Páez
February 1, 2022
On February 19, 2020, President Nicolás Maduro decreed an energy emergency and a state of exception in the country’s hydrocarbon industry, which led to the creation of the General Staff of the Workers’ Productive Councils (CPTT). Manuel Páez, who belongs to the presidential commission of the CPTT for the hydrocarbon sector, in an interview with Últimas Noticias, explained that there are “71 colleagues who were assigned (by the president and the working class itself) the task of directing the transformation of the industry… presenting a new management model, which is basically collective management.”
Páez indicated that “the socialist management model consists of collective management of work units… A spokesperson is elected for each process in each area, and the spokespersons elect a representative who reports to the general staff in each work unit.”
CPTT and unions
On the difference between unions and CPTT, Páez said that the function of the former is “purely vindictive, to defend a collective contract, the Organic Law of Labor, Workers and Workers, or the LOPCYMAT (Organic Law of Prevention, Conditions and Environment Work Environment, enacted on July 26, 2005 in Official Gazette 38,236). However, the CPTT empower the social process of work, so that through their functions distribution, production, marketing, administration, and operating decisions” of the industry are improved.
“It is the empowerment itself of the working class in decision making about production processes,” he emphasized.
These functions are “codified by the Constitutional Law of the CPTT, approved by the National Constituent Assembly (in 2017),” said Páez, while the functions of the unions “are codified in national and international legal bodies and agreements.”
Manuel Páez, member of the presidential commission of the CPTT for the hydrocarbon sector. Photo: Últimas Noticias
Facts
As one of the achievements of the CPTT, Páez notes that “today, thanks to a recovery plan presented by the workers (of PDVSA), fuel, oils, and lubricants for the country’s automotive fleet are being produced.” He added that it is “the best demonstration that the industry has undergone a structural change, thanks to the tireless work of the working class—first agent of change.”
“Today we can proudly say that we have achieved the goal of 1,450,000 barrels [barrels of oil produced per day],” he added. “Perhaps for some that goal is nothing, because before [in 2014] we produced three million, but we must take into account the price of crude oil; that for more than four years world production fell and the oil-producing countries did not even have the capacity to store and were insuring the wells; being in the middle of a pandemic and a quarantine, and even so, we managed to overcome difficulties and trace a clean path for another million barrels and continue to grow steadily… that is our main letter of introduction,” said Páez. In addition, Venezuela suffered under the brutality of the US and European economic blockade of PDVSA.
He warned that “only with the commitment, work, and tenacity of the working class can we get out of this difficulty” imposed, not only by the situation of the blockade, but by the very structure of the industry, inherited from the energy transnationals since before the so-called nationalization of oil in 1976.
Another achievement of the CPTT is the domestic manufacture of subway rails, despite the boycott of the companies that were supposed to supply them to the country.
Páez also mentioned how, following the electrical sabotage of March 2019, it took “40 days to recover and stabilize the system… and less than a month ago a similar sabotage occurred. In four hours, that working class that learned from the previous sabotage and generated procedure manuals.” This allowed for the prompt restoration of electrical services throughout the territory. “That is the commitment of the working class, because… it is not the minister or the manager who knows the production process,” but the workers, said Páez.
“Today we can say that SIDOR (publicly owned steel company Siderurgica del Orinoco), which transnationals dismantled,” Páez continued, “is producing the necessary steel for parts and pieces, and recovery plans are being designed with the working class.”
Páez recalled that cement factories imported their sacks, and could not market their production. “The working class carried out the necessary tests, and today those sacks are produced nationally,” Páez said. The same working class that “is presenting a water pump to the Ministry of Science that works without electricity… A pendulum, the way oil pumpjacks work.”
Páez recounted how PDVSA “is already producing its own bolts and screws” and INTEVEP [PDVSA subsidiary Venezuelan Institute Of Oil Technology] is producing bakelite for spare parts for the pumps being restored at the El Palito refinery in Carabobo state.
Political response
The implementation of the CPTT “is a correct state policy in response to the situation of the blockade and the coercive measures,” said Páez. “The workers are the ones who know the productive processes… It is not the manager, the director, or the president of the company who knows them, but the worker with the heat of the hammer, the wrench, the plant and the pump, who truly know how to optimize them.”
He said that the CPTTs are not merely President Maduro’s policy to face the blockade that is undermining the national economy, but “a political response to the situation in a country that deserves transformation and change in the management model.” The oil industry continues to employ “a management model that obeys the transnationals, designed by those companies at the time, and the industry has a debt,” Páez continued. “The revolutionary government has a debt to the Venezuelan people, so that there is a transformation of the industry, and that it be by and for the people.”
“It should not be just a slogan—’PDVSA now belongs to the people,'” said Páez. “It should transcend. And for that, the management model and the philosophy of how it was designed must be changed… The hydrocarbon industry must truly be at the service of the country and not at the service of transnational interests, as it continues to be.”
Venezuelan effort
“We have recovered our industry with effort… with Venezuelan effort,” Páez said, explaining that it is the “effort of those men and women who get up and leave their homes every day under very precarious economic and working conditions… Despite these conditions—the blockade and the coercive measures—we are uplifting the industry.”
He explained that the achievements of restoring and boosting the industry, now bearing fruit after a couple of years of management by the CPTTs—which will be two years old on February 19—was achieved precisely because the working class is being listened to.
“When the national government begins to believe in its working class, phenomena such as those that are happening in [Venezuela’s region of] Guayana arise,” said Páez. “Some essential enterprises were very deteriorated, and the impact generated by the electrical sabotage ended up killing their productive processes. Yet today, they are gradually recovering their productivity, along with the quality of life of those workers who every day exert great efforts to restore its industry.”
He pointed out that “for four years, maybe five” the oil workers have been carrying out “a root-cause diagnosis of what the hydrocarbon industry suffered,” and for this reason “we can see how Pequiven [publicly owned Petrochemical Venezuela] in the next quarter of 2022, will have close to 80% of its capacity in some important plants.” Páez noted the importance of petrochemicals for the development of Venezuela’s industrial and agricultural sectors.
Páez noted that the recovery experienced by the country “is not an improvisation” and that the workers, grouped in study centers and in production committees, trained with the Jesús Rivero Bolivarian University of Workers (UBT). Páez also highlighted the role of the Bolivarian National Militia for logistics and security training, and emphasized the joint effort to “combine a national production plan not only for fuels and lubricants, but also for spare parts.”
“It consists of intertwining the iron, aluminum, steel, electricity, cement, construction, and hydrocarbon sectors,” Páez said, “that cut across the country’s economy, to achieve reverse engineering through the Fábrica de Fabricas and resolve what the blockade has caused.”
He recalled that the Fábrica de Fábricas is “that wonderful complex that Comandante Chávez left us in Anaco [Anzoategui state].”
Technological sovereignty
Páez praised how the UBT, the Fábrica de Fábricas, the united productive sectors, the consensual effort of the working class, and the recognition of that contribution by the national government, create the dialectic that is permitting Venezuela to overcome its current difficulties. At the same time these converging forces are laying the groundwork for a profound transformation that will strengthen the productive apparatus of the country, and render it more effective against future aggression.
He pointed out the importance of reverse engineering that makes it possible to recognize the bottlenecks, and to produce domestically, through the ingenuity and experience of the workers, elements that allow Venezuela to “overcome the difficulty, generating spare parts that clearly will provide a true technological sovereignty.”
Páez explained that “one of the most significant pieces that have been made are subway rails, which were [originally] made by a French company, which is actually suing the Venezuelan state, alleging that they have to be paid for the construction of those rails (despite not providing them for timely replacement).” In this case, Venezuelan engineering and domestic manufacturing have permitted the repair and recovery of the transport system critical to the capital Caracas.
The emblematic case of the rails, Páez said, “is breaking the paradigms of onerous contracts” with which the state was handcuffed to make it dependent and submissive. “All the parasitic bourgeoisie that benefited from those contracts, who have lived from the oil income and the resources of the Venezuelan people, it makes them sting” that Venezuela is sovereign, said Páez.
Organization and training are key
Regarding the organizational capacity of the working class, Páez highlighted the importance of training, not only ideological but productive, and the exchange of knowledge to benefit society in the midst of adversity. “An entire training process is being systematized that allows education to become widespread,” said Páez, “which consists of knowledge applied beyond the academic; that is, of the years of experience that today prove to be much more valuable than degrees from large foreign universities.”
“Since the UBT Jesús Rivero is not academic, nor does it take place in the classroom, but rather is based on practice, everyone learns from everyone, which generates continuous and permanent collective knowledge,” said Páez.
“That class never stops learning and never stops advancing,” Páez explained.
Years of fighting
“The transformation processes have their times… we have been fighting for years for the transformation of the state so that it is a social state, of justice and of law,” Páez said. He recalled how “a serious political crisis, of moral values and of the country’s values, generated an uprising that managed to destroy an era of fictitious democracy,” giving rise to the government of President Chávez in 1998, who had to face military and economic attacks from the beginning, in addition to the failed oil industry coup in 2002.
The national oil industry continues to suffer “the consequences of 2002,” commented Páez. “More than $20 billion were lost… We have been a besieged industry.”
He highlighted how “since President Obama took off his mask and said that Venezuela was an unusual [and extraordinary] threat, the framework was created for an open blockade. At the time it was a sneaky blockade.” In this regard, Páez referred to that milestone whereby the economic siege on Venezuela was overtly expressed, issued by the US administration on March 9, 2015. The fragility of the national oil industry was subsequently revealed, exacerbated by its dependence on transnationals for its operation in all sectors.
“This crisis revealed that there is a structure within our industry that obeys transnational interests,” said Páez, noting how “it is no coincidence that the president of PDVSA for 11 years (Rafael Rámirez) walks freely around the world without even an investigation (by the US).” Ramírez was at the head of the company when graft allegedly occurred which, to a great extent, the last three administrations of the White House have used to justified the blockade against the primary national industry.
“It is incoherent that the United States points to the state oil company with accusations that are sometimes embarrassing to repeat, and that whoever was in charge is not responsible for anything,” noted Páez. “That means that Rafael Ramírez was a CIA agent all his life, and he was a fifth columnist… This is not new, we have always had traitors in our revolutionary processes throughout the world. The important thing is not to repeat that mistake. Identify the enemy in time, and do as little damage as possible.”
Páez explained that during “the management of Rafael Ramírez, of Eulogio del Pino, or Nelson Martínez, the policy was the same, there was no change.”
He pointed out that “with the arrival of the Minister of Petroleum Tareck El Aissami, a different dynamic has been instilled in the hydrocarbon industry, generating real results with it.”
Higher dialectics
For Páez, the working class “understands that the state can only be transformed with unity, organization, and superior training,” to overcome the difficulties, “and it is doing so.” He assured that current events constitute “a living example that contradictions generate dialectical solutions” because “the organization of the class is generating awareness of the seizure of power.” Páez cited the case of Bolívar state as an example, where the organization of the workers was imposed electorally.
There are “more than two million workers involved in the National System of Production and Fair Exchange of Goods and Services,” to break dependency by mainstreaming processes with the interconnection of the entire national productive apparatus, subjected to dismemberment by blockades and economic siege, said Páez.
“In Guayana [Bolivar state] alone there are 80,000 workers, and in the hydrocarbon industry 80,000 or 90,000 are involved in the production processes, and we have been generating class consciousness with the political dynamics that allow us to understand that we are still going through a class struggle,” said Páez.
Featured image: PDVSA oil worker in a Venezuelan refinery. Photo: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/REUTERS.
(Últimas Noticias) by Victor Castellanos, with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
https://orinocotribune.com/role-of-work ... nuel-paez/
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Radical Land Reform in Venezuela: A Conversation with Juan Carlos Loyo (Part I)
Chávez’s agriculture minister talks about the revolutionary changes in land tenure that took place under the former president.
Juan Carlos Loyo held various posts in Chávez’s government, including Minister of Agriculture from 2010 to 2013. Today Loyo is a researcher and a professor of political economy at the Bolivarian University in Caracas. In this two-part interview, he talks about the origin of Venezuela’s latifundia – large tracts of landed property, under a regime of low-intensity production – and the radical agrarian reform that Hugo Chávez tried to carry out during the heyday of the Bolivarian process.
In the debates about Venezuela’s ongoing struggle for the land, the origins of the latifundia are often left out. However, the latifundium was the defining form of landed property before the Bolivarian Revolution. What can you tell us about its history?
Let’s take the Spanish colonization as a starting point and the many rebellions and insurrections that followed the intitial process of dispossession.
When the Spanish occupied this territory, the crown handed over large tracts of land to what today we might call the agrarian bourgeoisie. People who had served the interests of the crown were retributed with land, which of course meant violently displacing the people inhabiting the territory. If we look at our history, we will discover that the latifundia structure implanted by the colonists survives up until the 21st century.
Of course, it’s worth mentioning that the Libertador [term used to refer to Simón Bolívar] promulgated the Law of Military Assets. The law altered the social order because it gave land to those who had participated in the Independence War. However, with Bolívar’s death, not only was the Law of Military Assets modified, but the lands that had been given by decree generally ended up going back to the old landowners.
The 19th century was characterized by many insurrections. The most critical moment was the Federal War [1847-1863] led by General Ezequiel Zamora, who bequeathed to us the war-cry: “Free land and free men!” Historian Néstor Tablante y Garrido documents no less than 44 rebellions between the years of 1830 and 1903. Tablante y Garrido calls those “the years of continuous violence.”
However, the logic of the latifundia continued into the 20th century. In fact, Juán Vicente Gómez [Venezuelan dictator from 1908-1935], who initiated the Venezuelan 20th century, was a large landowner. Nonetheless, with the beginning of oil extraction and the formation of the modern Venezuelan state in the 1920s, the conflict over agrarian land changed its nature. Still, at the time, the forms of land tenure remained unmodified. In fact, a 1937 census shows that of the approximately 69,000 landowners registered by the state, 3000 owned 90% of the land, 412 owned close to 8 million hectares, while only 13 owned more than two and a half million hectares.
The first attempt to deal with the land problem in the 20th century happened in 1961 with the Agrarian Reform Law of Rómulo Betancourt [Venezuelan president, 1945-1948 and 1959-1964]. However, at its core, the law fell short of an agrarian reform.
During his prior exile, Betancourt had witnessed the revolutionary potential of the struggle for land in Central and South America. That is why he promoted a carefully supervised or controlled land reform, which was carried out with the local elite on board. In fact, in the 1980s, even the Senate of the Republic determined that Betancourt’s attempted agrarian reform had failed.
Why was it a failure? Because it did not change the latifundia property structure. In the best of cases, campesinos were given small plots of not-so-desirable land that had previously belonged to the state, not to the large landowners.
Thus, when the Bolivarian Revolution arrived in 1998, land tenure in Venezuela was still defined by the old latifundia structures that had been overcome in many countries during the 20th century.
When the Spanish settled what we now know as Venezuela, they established latifundia. (Archive)
What are the main characteristics of Venezuelan latifundia?
The latifundia is a form of land ownership that is not just characterized by its large extension, but also by its low-yield production. For example, in Apure state [in southern Venezuela], landowners occupied land for non-intensive cattle raising, and it is very inefficient from a productive standpoint.
Moreover, this type of model displaces campesinos. If we were to look at a satellite photo of Apure, we would see that the campesinos have been corralled on the banks of the rivers, which are areas where crops are often lost when the water level rises in winter, or where agriculture is simply not viable.
In sum, the latifundia is an economic structure that is not only socially and economically unjust, but it is also of little or no use to the nation.
You mentioned that in Venezuela, throughout the 20th century, the only important land reform happened in 1961, but that it was very restricted and didn’t really change the organization of property in the countryside. Why is it that there wasn’t a more radical land reform here, as happened in most of the continent?
When Venezuela became an oil-producing country, the struggle for the land became a secondary issue. The main objective became capturing as large a chunk of the oil rent as possible.
Additionally, the economic reorganization of society brought about by oil exploitation triggered a huge exodus from the countryside to the city. Venezuela’s population became more and more urban and concentrated in the northern coastal center of the country, where state services also concentrated. We could say that this dynamic made the countryside invisible. The principal conflict became access to what the oil rent had to offer, from basic services to decadent wealth.
In the last decade of the 20th century, however, there were some interesting struggles for land that would leave their mark in the Bolivarian Process. Can you tell us about them?
Yes, in fact, there are two struggles that were important for the renewed left that was emerging in the 90s. The first one is Los Cañizos Paloquemao in Yaracuy, where campesinos occupied a large estate and received a lot of support from leftist university movements.
There is another very important episode: campesino communities in the center of the country confronted the Irish multinational Smurfit Kappa Group, which owned large tracts of land. The young social activist Antonia Muñoz and Douglas Bravo [60s guerrilla commander] participated in this struggle.
These struggles were carried out without any kind of protection from the state. In fact, the state repressed all campesino land struggles during the Fourth Republic [1958-1999].
It was roughly at the time of the Paloquemao and Smurfit struggles that Chávez was developing the idea of the “Tree of Three Roots.” In the mid-80s he spent some time deployed in Elorza, in the plains state of Apure, where he had been sent as punishment for his subversive activity within the armed forces.
There he learned about the injustices of latifundia: the inequality and poverty it generates. The Tree of Three Roots would become the ideological framework for the revolution, and it highlighted Simón Bolívar, Venezuela’s independence leader, and his teacher Simón Rodríguez, but it also included General Ezequiel Zamora, the popular leader of the war against the oligarchy and the latifundia in the 19th Century.
Hugo Chávez con horseback. (MinCI)
The 1999 Constitution was relatively progressive on issues related to land tenure. Could you outline the constitution’s key articles regarding land distribution in Venezuela?
The 1999 Constitution is a very rich document that incorporates the plurality of demands of the pueblo and the mass movement that had accompanied Chávez. It contains, in a condensed form, a proposal for reorganizing Venezuelan society that had been brewing for years.
When it comes to the problem of the land, the central issue expresses itself in the articles that state that latifundia run contrary to the interests of the nation. The constitution also obliges the state to go against this kind of landholding model.
Two years after the Constitutional Referendum, in 2001, Chávez promoted the Land Law, which was a turning point in Venezuela’s history. What did this law represent?
The Land Law established that the latifundia – which is that tract of land that exceeds the regional average – must be eradicated because it goes against the interests of the nation.
To recover latifundia land, two conditions must be met. First, you must demonstrate that the land is producing 50% below its potential. Second, whoever claims to be the owner must not be able to produce proof of the private origin of the land. In Venezuela, since independence, all property has had a state-produced title.
That is why the person who claims to be the owner must be able to prove the origin of the property. This happens not only in Venezuela, but all around the world: if I want to sell a car, I must prove its origin.
The Land Law also recognises campesino land occupations. In such situations, there are mechanisms that give the campesinos the right to remain on the land. If you occupy formerly idle land for more than two years, and you are producing, then you have the right to a title that allows you to continue occupying and working the land. You are not the owner, but you have the right to usufruct the land.
The Land Law seeks to protect the weakest people in the agrarian structure: the campesino family and women in particular. That is why the law favors giving titles not to the “head of the family” but to whole families or to collectives.
Additionally, the Land Law bound the state to provide campesinos with the tools and equipment needed for farming. For a few years, implements, seeds, and even tractors were given to campesinos. The law bound the state to do so. All this was the outcome of a long struggle, and because of Chávez’s commitment to justice and raising production levels. It was made possible because the nation had gained control of its main resource: oil.
The Land Law unleashed the bourgeoisie's fury. There was an episode in which the President of FEDENAGA [national association of large cattle ranchers] Jose Luis Betancourt publicly tore up the law in contempt as a symbolic gesture.
The 2001 Land Law and other groundbreaking legislation that was passed triggered the 2002 coup d'état. This is not surprising: the Land Law touched the interests of some of the most powerful sectors of the bourgeoisie.
What was the actual impact of the Land Law?
The first stage of land reform took place between 2003 and 2005. During that period, the state resolved some longstanding campesino conflicts – above all, in Cojedes, Apure, and Yaracuy.
At that time the Fundos Zamoranos – which were campesino initiatives involving cooperative farming – began to emerge. Endogenous development nuclei [collectivized initiatives that received direct state financing] also emerged around the same time.
In Venezuela, 70% of the population lives in 30% of the territory. So at that time, the government was also trying to favor a return to the countryside with a view to fostering agricultural production.
During the early days of the Bolivarian Revolution, the government also carried out a census of the countryside and made a map of all the existing latifundia.
A mural of General Ezequiel Zamora and the “Zamorana” flag, which reads “Land and free men.” (Tatuy TV)
That was the first stage of the agrarian revolution under Chávez. What happened after 2005?
The second stage, which went through 2009-2010, is when the Venezuelan state took on a truly active role in the struggle against latifundia. By then, with the help of the agricultural census, the ongoing problem of the latifundia became very evident. The results were striking: out of 2445 existing estates, less than 1% occupied 7 million hectares, which is almost 25% of the agrarian land in the country.
The Land Law’s struggle against large estates really began with force in 2005. In those years, we intervened huge ranches such as La Marqueseña and La Vergareña. These actions were symbolically important.
The interventions in latifundia were the most visible agrarian policy during that five-year period. However, during that time, historical conflicts continued to be resolved in favor of the campesinos, and campesinos likewise received direct support from the government.
What happened after 2009-2010. Was there a new agrarian strategy?
More than a new strategy, I would say that after 2010, the focus became the nation’s recovery of type I and type II soils, which are highly productive but less common. The objective was to make good on the Simón Bolívar National Plan, which stated that the state should foster agrarian production.
Those were the years in which the struggles in the Aragua-Carabobo Valley and Sur del Lago took place. The occupations of land in the Sur del Lago were very visible because there were people in that land who had lived in conditions of semi-slavery. There, in the Turbio River Valley [Lara and Portuguesa states] and in other places, we encountered complex situations, marked by social exclusion. Although those were the best lands in the country, their production had stalled long ago. Meanwhile, people living in huts on the edge of the latifundia had been plunged into poverty and had no access to the land.
In a few words, the strategic objective from 2010 until Chávez’s death was to intervene in the land and reactivate agriculture for the nation’s development.
Hugo Chávez and Juan Carlos Loyo in the Aragua-Carabobo Valley, 2011. (Archive)
How much land was recovered between 2003 and 2012?
We recovered 6.5 million hectares of latifundia land and put it in the service of the nation. That is why we can say there was a profound agrarian reform. In Venezuela, there are approximately 30 million hectares of agricultural land, so what happened during those years was no small achievement.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15440
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Fewer Than 15 Countries Recognize US-Appointed Venezuelan Coup Leader Juan Guaidó
January 31, 2022
By Benjamin Norton – Jan 28, 2022
A right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader and former top Juan Guaidó functionary admitted a maximum of 15 countries recognize the unelected coup leader as “interim president.” The Joe Biden administration is one of them.
January 23, 2022 marks the third anniversary of the US government’s ongoing coup attempt against Venezuela’s only constitutional government, that of democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro.
On that day in 2019, the Donald Trump administration appointed little-known Venezuelan opposition politician Juan Guaidó, who had never received a single vote in a presidential election, as supposed “interim president” of the Caribbean nation.
At the peak of the US-led coup attempt, fewer than 60 of the 193 UN member states recognized Guaidó. And that number has dropped precipitously since then.
One of Guaidó’s top former functionaries, the right-wing Venezuelan opposition politician Julio Borges, has admitted in an interview that a maximum of just 15 countries still recognize Guaidó as of January 2022.
Major Western media outlets have acknowledged that Guaidó does not actually control anything inside Venezuela, other than what the United States stole for him.
Yet the Joe Biden administration has maintained Trump’s policy of support for Guaidó.
This recognition has continued despite November 2021 regional elections in Venezuela, which were observed by the European Union, in which Guaidó’s party faced a crushing defeat, and the United Socialist Party (PSUV) of President Maduro won in a landslide.
Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó in the White House with US President Donald Trump in February 2020 (Photo credit: public domain)
The nations that still refuse to recognize Venezuela’s constitutional President Maduro consist primarily of the United States and its right-wing allies in Latin America, including Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Ecuador, along with the Washington-controlled Organization of American States (OAS).
The Liberal Justin Trudeau government of Canada still backs Guaidó as well.
Britain is one of the only remaining European countries that refuses to acknowledge Maduro – partially because, by continuing to formally recognize Guaidó, it provides a judicial excuse for the Bank of England to steal nearly $2 billion worth of Venezuelan gold.
Guaidó’s coup regime in fact used money illegally seized from Venezuela’s Central Bank to pay legal costs in the UK, in its efforts to control these billions of dollars worth of looted Venezuelan gold, journalist John McEvoy revealed.
Even Spain, which harbors Venezuelan fugitives from justice who organized violent coup attempts against the Chavista government, no longer really recognizes Guaidó.
Perhaps the most powerful member of Venezuela’s political opposition, Leopoldo López, a right-wing extremist from an ultra-wealthy oligarch family, lives in Madrid, where he has enjoyed the support of the Spanish government. This is despite the fact that López admitted to orchestrating violent coup attempts and plotting a failed invasion of Venezuela in May 2020, known as Operation Gideon.
In an implicit admission that all of these efforts at overthrowing Venezuela’s legitimate government had failed, the European Union stopped recognizing Guaidó as of January 2021.
Julio Borges, the Venezuelan opposition politician who said a maximum of just 15 countries still recognize Guaidó, knows from firsthand experience.
Borges previously served as so-called “foreign minister” for Guaidó’s parallel coup regime, which has never exercised power inside Venezuela and was never voted on by the Venezuelan people.
Borges resigned from Guaidó’s coup regime in December 2021, saying the unelected “interim government has been deformed,” and “it should disappear.”
https://orinocotribune.com/fewer-than-1 ... an-guaido/
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Venezuelan Coup Attempt Leader Calls for Protests, but he Might End Up in Prison Before Long
January 31, 2022
By Peter Bolton – Jan 29, 2022
As The Canary has consistently reported, the US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela has been degenerating into an increasingly pathetic and embarrassing spectacle. Now, in one final gasp of desperation, Juan Guaidó has called for a fresh round of protests next month. But it looks like he and his dwindling band of followers’ hopes of toppling the government will soon be dashed. Because there are now growing calls for his prosecution for crimes including treason.
Washington and its mouthpieces in the corporate-owned media will surely crow that this somehow constitutes ‘proof’ of the Venezuelan government’s authoritarian nature. But the reality is that the US is, if anything, even less tolerant of the kind of behavior that its proxies in Venezuela have engaged in as part of their attempt to seize power.
Another call to the streets
On 23 January, Guaidó called on his supporters to hit the streets on 12 February to protest president Nicolas Maduro’s government. Guaidó has been the leader of an ongoing coup attempt since early 2019. In January of that year, then-US president Donald Trump declared him Venezuela’s ‘interim president’. In the early months of the coup, most of the US’s major Latin American and European allies recognizedGuaidó as the country’s legitimate leader.
But as time went by, his support from abroad began to decline. As The Canary reported at the time, in January 2021 the European Union withdrew its recognition of his claim to power. Guaidó derived this claim from his position as leader of Venezuela’s legislature, the National Assembly. But because he and his party boycotted the National Assembly elections the previous year, he no longer even held a seat in the body. This therefore voided the premise behind his claim to power even on its own terms.
Pledge for peacefulness undermined by violent past
It’s in the context of this increasingly desperate situation that Guaidó has called for this fresh round of protests against Maduro’s government. He has indicated that the demonstrations should be peaceful. But his past involvement in violent street protests casts doubt on his sincerity.
In his younger years, Guaidó was a member of one of the street gangs that led the ‘guarimba’ protests. In 2014, these protests left over 40 people dead. Then in 2017 the ‘guarimberos’ returned. And, according to Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal, they were responsible for “causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people”.
Growing calls to bring Guaidó to justice
But irrespective of the sincerity of his commitment to non-violence, Guaidó might soon find himself behind bars anyway. Members of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV in its Spanish initials) have been increasing their calls for Guaidó’s prosecution. During an event commemorating the overthrow of Venezuela’s general Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s murderous dictatorship in the 1950s, president Maduro assured supporters that “justice will definitely come”.
Meanwhile, a majority of PSUV National Assembly members have petitioned Venezuela’s attorney general to take action against Guaidó. He currently stands accused of treason and fraud by the Assembly’s Anti-Corruption Commission. And he also faces criminal charges of “treason, money laundering, embezzlement, and ties to Colombian-based paramilitary gangs”.
Like their puppet masters in Washington and cheerleaders in the corporate press, Guaidó and his supporters will also presumably characterize this as ‘proof’ of the Maduro government’s inherent authoritarianism. But it should be pointed out that though PSUV members are leading the calls for Guaidó’s prosecution, it’ll be Venezuela’s independent judicial system, not the government, that tries him. Moreover, there’s ample evidence to suggest that Guaidó is guilty of all the crimes for which he stands accused.
Overwhelming evidence of guilt
To take the most obvious example, colluding with a hostile foreign power (the US) that’s imposing unilateral sanctions on his own country (in flagrant violation of international law) seems a cut-and-dry case of treason. The sanctions have been responsible for the deaths of over a hundred thousand people. Yet Guaidó continues to use them as a bargaining chip in negotiations. He recently said during an interview with Reuters, for example, that the offer to withdraw sanctions as part of a peace deal with the government “is not indefinite”.
This kind of behavior is criminalized in most countries, not least in the US where treason is a capital crime. The fact that Guaidó has largely continued his coup attempt unmolested by Venezuelan authorities shows that, if anything, Venezuela is more tolerant of political dissent than the US. After all, given all the fuss over (alleged) Russian influence in the 2016 US election, we can see how powerbrokers in Washington do not tolerate even comparatively minor (alleged) interference in their own country’s internal affairs.
Looting gold and rubbing shoulders with Colombian death squads
There’s also considerable evidence to support the charges of fraud and embezzlement. As The Canaryhas extensively reported, Guaidó attempted to get access to gold belonging to the Central Bank of Venezuela that was being held by the Bank of England. The Bank of England unilaterally froze the assets on the bogus grounds that Maduro was no longer Venezuela’s rightful leader. Maduro’s government is currently taking legal action in the UK to recover these stolen assets.
Likewise, evidence to support charges of ties to Colombian paramilitaries is substantial. In September 2019, the Guardian reported:
Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.
Clearly, the days Guaidó has left to continue this ridiculous charade are numbered. It may not be long before he finally faces justice for his murderous and destabilizing coup attempt – one that’s plunged Venezuela into ever-greater chaos and turmoil.
https://orinocotribune.com/venezuelan-c ... fore-long/
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Venezuela and Honduras Re-establish Diplomatic Relations
Honduras and Venezuela restore diplomatic relations broken in 2019. Jan. 30, 2022. | Photo: Al Mayadeen Net
Published 30 January 2022
The handover of accrediting documents ceremony took place at the Government Palace in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, this past Saturday, January 30.
The Governments of Honduras and Venezuela formalized the reestablishment of bilateral diplomatic relations with the delivery and reception of the accrediting copies of Ambassador Margaud Godoy, ambassador of the South American country to the Central American nation of Honduras.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia indicated on his Twitter account that the documents were handed over to his counterpart of the Central American country, Minister Enrique Reina, in a ceremony held at the Government Palace in Tegucigalpa.
Plasencia lauded that with this procedure, diplomatic relations between both countries have formally resumed.
We delivered to Chancellor Enrique Reina, in a ceremony held at the Government Palace in Tegucigalpa, the Style Copies accrediting Margaud Godoy as Ambassador of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the Republic of Honduras.
The Honduran Minister of Foreign Affairs informed via his Twitter account: "We received the style copies from Ambassador Margaud Godoy in the company of Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia, for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela".
Godoy, a lawyer, expert in criminal proceedings and graduate of the University of the Andes, was Vice minister of Communes, Governor of the Cojedes State and the Minister of Women and Gender Equality of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Subsequent to the appointment of Xiomara Castro as President last Thursday, Honduras and Venezuela announced the renewal of diplomatic ties, which had been broken in 2019 as a result of the then Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández not recognizing the Government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia, travelled to Tegucigalpa to attend as a guest at the swearing-in of Castro, who will be in power in the 2022-2026 quadrennium. The Venezuelan foreign minister declared that diplomatic relations have been re-established and that together they will build Latin American and Caribbean unity.
In addition, the Venezuelan foreign minister announced last Friday that they will ask the new Honduran authorities to investigate the theft of tangible goods registered at the headquarters of the Venezuelan embassy in Tegucigalpa during Hernández's term (2014-2022).
Minister Plasencia expressed that the real estate has suffered destruction and that there has been theft of material assets, while other assets such as works of art are missing. They call to the new judicial bodies to search for and punish the perpetrators of these crimes.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ven ... -0001.html