First published in German by Analyse und Kritik. Expanded translation from Venezuelan Voices.
Conflicts continue in Venezuela over the controversial results of the July 28 presidential elections. Incumbent President Nicolas Maduro was officially declared the winner by the National Electoral Council (CNE) with a 7 percent lead over his main opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez. Although the elections were characterized by a series of irregularities and to date no results have been published at the polling station level, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) has validated Maduro’s victory. In the days following the elections, protests took place in almost the entire country, in which 25 people were killed and many were injured. More than 2,000 people, including more than 100 minors, were arrested. In light of these events, anger is growing among the population, which has been suffering from an economic catastrophe for years. There have also been considerable mobilizations in popular barrios such as Petare and Catia, in Caracas, long considered strongholds of Chavismo. More and more leftists, including former Bolivarian activists, are forming new coalitions and campaigns against the government. In recent days, statements with a decidedly leftist perspective have been published, characterizing the government’s actions as state terrorism and dictatorial. The interview took place on August 30.
Michael Karrer: On July 29, thousands of people took to the streets in response to the results announced by the CNE. The reaction of the Maduro government, which had previously threatened “a bloodbath”, was ruthless. What is the particularity of the current mobilizations and the attitude of the government?
Atenea Jiménez: People didn’t only come out after the elections. Already the day before there were those who went to the electoral centers with mattresses to sleep there, with tables to play while spending the night. It was a popular initiative that had nothing to do with any of the candidacies. It seems that the people intuitively said: we are going to look out before the polling stations are opened and the possibility to vote is taken away from us. Also the demonstrations in the following days were basically a popular phenomenon. There was an unprecedented repression, including the persecution of electoral witnesses, polling center officials and leaders of opposition parties. But in addition to that, they have persecuted relatives of activists, even young people who post on social media a video or get a message (on their cell phones), and are detained for that, without having been actually involved in activism. Among the political prisoners there are approximately 100 minors, children and adolescents, and this goes against the rights enshrined in the Constitution. In the face of this onslaught, various sectors of the country have said that this is outside the limits of democracy. What happened was a popular avalanche from the neighborhoods of Petare, Catia, in Caracas and other parts of the country, sectors that historically supported Chavez and Maduro. Of course, this also had an electoral expression. Evidently, people came out to defend democracy, to defend their vote and not to be deprived of the possibility of electing, which is what is at stake.
Simón Rodríguez: I would add that already in 2017 there were big popular protests and the phenomenon of the barrios mobilizing was seen, which has a great symbolic importance since they were the protagonists of the 1989 popular rebellion against the International Monetary Fund and President Carlos Andrés Pérez in Caracas. Symbolically, the Chavista Government always tried to appropriate that legacy, but especially in 2017 and notoriously now in 2024, the Government has become clearly again the executioner of the Venezuelan people. The electoral fraud has been so outrageous that the government hasn’t even published the detailed electoral results, as required by law.
Has the left in Venezuela definitively broken with the Maduro government?
SR: This government represents a sector of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, not only the military who run mafia businesses, mining and smuggling, who have a control derived from their position in the Venezuelan State, but also emerging capitalist sectors, what is popularly known as the bolibourgeoisie, which for two decades has amassed fortunes with the exchange arbitrage, that is, by receiving cheap petrodollars. This is the government that is repressing the people for, as Atenea says, simply defending their democratic rights. And the reason for this rupture has to do with the fact that it has been a government that has conducted the biggest economic counterrevolution ever seen in Latin America and one of the worst in the world, the deplorable milestone of having destroyed 80% of the Venezuelan economy without there having been a war or a natural catastrophe. And all this started long before the oil sanctions of 2019.
It is correct to speak of State terrorism in a context of forced disappearances and paramilitarism. It is important to locate the moment in which the regime acquires dictatorial characteristics. It seems clear to me that 2015 were the last elections held under more or less democratic conditions when the government lost 2/3 of the National Assembly (NA) as a result of a punishment vote, just like the punishment vote of 2024 against a corrupt government of billionaires that disguises itself as socialist. Upon losing these elections the government annulled the NA and since then we have a de facto government with constitutional guarantees suspended. So we have had nine years of that experience, although the criminalization of social protest begins much earlier and it is documented especially since 2007. At that time sectors of the bourgeois opposition complained that the government did not repress enough, that there was disorder in the country with peasants taking land, workers going on strikes not authorized by the government, etc., and that an iron fist was needed. The authorities began to use the accusation of agavillamiento against peasants, union leaders, students, workers, to criminalize the alleged intention of committing a crime, an alleged conspiracy involving several people. This diffuse crime was used to imprison hundreds of people during Chávez’s time.
And in those processes of persecution and repression that included the arbitrary imprisonment between 2009 and 2011 and then the assassination of the indigenous leader Sabino Romero in 2013, the imprisonment of the union leader Rubén González between 2009 and 2011, assassinations of union leaders such as Argenis Vázquez in the state of Sucre. Or revolutionary Trotskyist comrades in the state of Aragua like Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernandez and Carlos Requena, assassinated in 2008. All these repressive processes were contributing to the rupture of left-wing sectors.
AJ: Analyzing the political situation afterwards, I agree that in 2015 there was a rupture. But we who were in the popular movement, and even in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), still thought that it was an impasse that was going to be resolved and we did not expect the authoritarian drift we have today. For the communal movement, the most important rupture occurred in 2017, when we were summoned to the National Constituent Assembly, in the midst of a political crisis that existed in the country. We met in several platforms to evaluate whether it was pertinent to participate. Finally, we decided to participate in a space of critical chavismo, which we called “chavismo bravío”, which would recover and promote the construction of a popular power and a form of government different from the one we have known so far.
We made our list of people who would be candidates. But after the elections, similarly to what’s happening now, a long time passed without the results being published. It was a mockery, because supposedly the CNE web page was not functioning and after it reappeared, all the people who supposedly won were from the PSUV or close to it. There was practically no one who won as constituent for the communal sector that came from that popular movement that preceded Chávez, people who built and continue building very interesting things. At that moment there was an important rupture and in some communes they debated not to participate in the following elections and to say that this is happening to us, we have just been robbed by the government itself. Although I must say that there are a large number of communes that still believe that the existing structures are an option.
At the time, many left-wing militants joined Hugo Chávez’s project when he proclaimed a 21st century socialism and found a platform for their own political agenda in grassroots organizations such as the Communal Councils and later the Communes. Was it a mistake for a large part of the left to join Chavismo? How do you see today this relationship between grassroots organization, government and State?
AJ: I come from the student movement that confronted neoliberalism in the IV Republic. The student, community, cultural and environmentalist movement was fighting in the streets for the vindication of democracy, free and public education and health care. When Chávez took the stage, almost all the popular and leftist movements saw that he was an option for a great coalition. Although at the beginning Chávez did not claim to be a leftist or a socialist, he came with a nationalist proposal which still meant a rupture with the existing, degraded, corrupt state of things.
Then Chávez, on the one hand, tried in principle to open those doors of participation, but from the beginning there was an internal class struggle between sectors of the bourgeoisie and between sectors of the military. Chávez was accompanied by sectors of the bourgeoisie, middle classes, peasants and popular classes. It was a carnival of political and ideological positions. In that first phase we advanced considerably, we had important victories, we were able to do things that had a value in terms of organization, in the recovery of many of the social, political and human rights of our population. But those contradictions that were there at the beginning began to worsen. For example, the military sectors were for a long time against the construction of a popular communal alternative economy. Every time they tried to move forward, these sectors imprisoned community members, peasants, invaded their lands, tried to manipulate the process so that the land would be awarded to other sectors. It was a permanent dispute and wear and tear. So much so that the communes and the popular movements had more contradictions with the sectors within the currents of Chavismo and the government than with the right-wing opposition in the country.
And then Maduro came and began to create movements tailored to his needs, structures at the community level that were authoritarian, vertical, decided by the party with a high bureaucratization and with a kind of voluntary officials that disputed with the commune, with the spokesperson elected in assembly, with the sectoral movements that have their banners of struggle, LGBTI, women and environmentalists. When we were going to advance our agenda towards direct democracy and the construction of our own companies, they put a brake on us. When it was proposed, instead of creating the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP), a totally vertical structure, we in the commune, the peasant movements and the producers of the country were proposing direct and collective social property enterprises of several communes to be able to produce, plan and distribute directly to the communities. There they put a brake on us, even public officials who at one time were activists of the Popular movement, were co-opted to become ministers and vice ministers and later emerged as political policemen of the Maduro government.
So this has led not only to the weakening of the movement, but also to the weakening of society, because the movements are organic expressions of society. The fact that in this opportunity the left did not have a candidate is the result of a policy of eliminating everything that could mean competition for Maduro.
SR: In my experience, for example, I began political work when the government was facing the threat of military coups, therefore it allowed many experiences of self-organization, it allowed the creation of new unions, it even allowed the operation of many community radio stations without legal authorization. I worked in a community radio station for several years, it was a very critical radio station. This was allowed to happen because it was seen almost as a necessary evil. It was necessary to let people organize and mobilize as a dike of containment against the coup. But as soon as this situation passed, the coup stage was overcome between 2002 and 2004, the government took the offensive.
The PSUV was created with the intention of having a corporate apparatus that would put an end to the autonomous processes of self-organization that the Venezuelan people had since the 80s. The Venezuelan revolutionary process was not initiated by Chavismo. What Chavismo has done is to co-opt it, repress it and finally destroy it. Chávez himself said that this was a party that was not going to tolerate union autonomy because it was a “counterrevolutionary poison” of the IV Republic that could not be tolerated. So he created a military corporate party with a total prohibition of organized tendencies, without public programmatic political debates, where all political disputes were turned into palace intrigues that resulted in purges, as for example the arrests of dozens of PSUV militants and officials every time a minister is accused of corruption, as has happened with Rafael Ramírez or Tarek El Aissami.
Communal councils and workers’ councils were also created and although many people saw them as their organizational instrument, the government always saw them as instances of control, that contradiction existed. People who saw the possibility of organizing through these mechanisms and a government that tried to liquidate any process of self-organization and struggle.
Both have emphasized the spontaneous character of the current protests. Do the Venezuelan lefts have any role in all this?
SR: The government has destroyed democratic life not only at the level of elections and the big parties, but also at the level of grassroots organizations, in such a way that the possibilities for the left are very reduced. At the moment it is very difficult to publicly call for political activities without exposing oneself to persecution. In addition, there is no union liberty: in the oil industry, where the independent left has a lot of strength, there have been no union elections since 2009 and the same has happened in the steel industry where the last ones were in 2011. However, it is a titanic and heroic task and deserving of the greatest sympathy and support that the left-wing opposition is doing in Venezuela, given the very harsh conditions of persecution that exist.
What we have today is a diversity of leftist sectors that oppose Maduro. Some claim to continue the Chávez legacy, others do not. We think that Chávez, to a certain extent, prepared the conditions for the current disaster, both economically and politically. But the positive thing is that from the more traditional sectors such as the Communist Party, the sectors of Chavista opposition, Marxist sectors that have been exercising a left-wing opposition since the Chávez years, in general we coincide beyond strategic and programmatic differences in opposing a fierce capitalist dictatorship. And spaces such as the Encounter in Defense of the Rights of the People have arisen expressing these diverse currents.
AJ: I believe that a good part of the people who voted against Maduro on July 28 have also voted against a way of doing politics on the left. Therefore, we are also in a process of self-criticism. The Venezuelan people in their diverse expressions have been ahead of the left, of course, ahead also of the right. The lefts have to accompany what the Venezuelan people have already started, because they have been behind our people. Our people went out to the streets alone, they are in jail enduring the violence.
Let us say that the elements where the lefts are pushing forward are in the strengthening and defense of democracy, of sovereignty and the defense of the Constitution. On the issue of human rights, there are people, lawyers, NGOs, different movements that are supporting the victims and the families. These are the three elements that are being pursued and where the popular and leftist movement is proposing different activities, taking into account the risks that exist, which are very many. For example, we have just called for a cacerolazo on the 28th of August with a coalition of the left.
You both live abroad at the moment, but you are still part of leftist platforms and organizations in Venezuela. How can you support the leftist forces at the international level?
SR: First of all, to show solidarity with the thousands of people who are currently political prisoners in Venezuela, simply for having defended their democratic rights. And repudiate the repression, the electoral fraud of the dictator Maduro, to be very clear that what there is in Venezuela is not a leftist government. It’s quite simple to do so, given that in general the leftists in the world do not advocate that in their country there should be a minimum wage of $4 a month, or that people of the LGBT community should be criminalized. Neither do they argue that the government should have an ultraconservative, religious discourse, nor do they argue that society should be militarized or that neighboring countries should be invaded, as Maduro is advocating against Guyana.
From the outside, I think that our role as socialists and revolutionaries is to deepen these discussions in order to arouse solidarity, because unfortunately these discussions are mostly absent. I would like to highlight two positive examples: there was a statement by a sector of the French New Popular Front that declared itself in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and also the parliament member of the Socialist Left of Argentina, Mónica Schlotthauer, who proposed a resolution in the Argentine Congress rejecting the dictatorship’s fraud and repression. Although its value is symbolic, these statements are very important, because they help to remove the false leftist mask that this government uses. It’s very important that leftist activism in Europe and other countries listens to the Venezuelan left and stop repeating pseudo anti-imperialist slogans to justify a totally reactionary regime.
AJ: Support the issue of human rights, divulge what is happening with the young people who are imprisoned, the children who are today in Venezuelan jails. To deepen, to push and also to take a stand against the Maduro government and its authoritarian drift so that together, in solidarity, we defend democracy and defend the sovereignty and self-determination of our people, who have wanted to exercise it through the vote and have not been able to do so.
In terms of the international left, I take up again what President Boric of Chile said: it’s important for the lefts of the world to build a democratic left that moves further and further away from authoritarianism, that deepens the popular and social processes in the demands of the peoples. It’s therefore necessary for the world to know what is really happening and for large international coalitions to be formed.
Atenea Jiménez is a sociologist and founder of the community network Red Nacional de Comuner@s in Venezuela and of the Universidad Campesina de Venezuela Argimiro Gabaldón. She is currently active in a network (as yet unnamed) that brings together a wide range of leftist movements in Venezuela and whose central concern is the defense of the Constitution. Within this framework, international solidarity committees will also be organized in the future.
Simón Rodríguez is co-founder of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSL) in Venezuela, a Marxist party of a Trotskyist tradition that participated in elections between 2012 and 2015, prior to the annulment of its legal status by the authorities. PSL leaders played an important role in the founding of the National Union of Workers (UNETE) and in the workers’ opposition in the United Federation of Oil Workers (FUTPV).
Michael Karrer is a literary and cultural critic specializing in Latin America.
