#News | Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was among the first to congratulate Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva following his victory in Sunday’s second-round presidential election.

“We celebrate the victory of the Brazilian people [...] Long live the peoples determined to be free, sovereign and independent! Today democracy triumphed in Brazil. Congratulations Lula!” tweeted the Venezuelan head of state shortly after the results were announced.

Lula defeated his far-right opponent Jair Bolsonaro by a narrow margin, with unofficial results giving him 50.9 percent over Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent. Due to Brazil’s large population, the result nonetheless had the former president defeating the incumbent by over 2 million votes.

The return of the former union leader to the presidency is expected to have large ramifications throughout the region, consolidating a series of victories by leftist and progressive candidates in recent votes.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15636

#Analysis | From the onset of the Bolivarian Process, the Hugo Chávez government implemented policies to democratize food production in Venezuela.

From the 2001 Land Law all the way to the nationalization or creation of companies such as AgroPatria or Pedro Camejo (1), the goal was to ensure the sector was not subjected to the whims of the market and to support small and midsize production, especially from popular power organizations.

In recent years, an economic crisis heavily exacerbated by US sanctions has driven a liberalization of economic policies. The Venezuelan countryside has been no exception.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15637

#Breaking | Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro received his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro Tuesday in Caracas to discuss recently renewed bilateral relations and the situation in the countries' shared border.

Petro was welcomed at the “Simón Bolívar” International Airport (La Guaira state, near Caracas) by Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez before heading to the Miraflores presidential palace to meet Maduro in an honor ceremony.

This is the first face-to-face meeting between the two heads of state since fully restoring diplomatic relations in August leaving behind years of broke-off ties. Soon after, Petro and Maduro reopened the countries’ 2,200-kilometer shared border to normalize trade and work together to tackle criminal smuggling and violence from irregular armed groups.

(Story in development).

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15638

#News | Following a closed-door encounter, Presidents Nicolás Maduro and Gustavo Petro issued a joint statement and gave a press conference where they informed about a number of issues “to work on from now on” as they aim to expand diplomatic and economic relations, said the Venezuelan mandatary.

President Maduro went on to detail that the two leaders agreed to prioritize "border security and the fight against drug trafficking” as well as energy, trade and economic relations, the return of Venezuela to the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), and strengthening the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) for regional integration.

For his part, President Petro emphasized that both governments still had “a long way to go” when it came to reconstructing bilateral relations. He reassured that normalization at the border would include attending to the migrant population from both nations.

The Petro-Maduro summit was the first between the two heads of state since fully restoring diplomatic relations in August and the first between presidents from the neighboring countries since 2016.

Full story 👇

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15638

🧵🗞When you're wrong about something, you have two options. If you're honest, you re-examine your premises. If you're dishonest, like the corporate media, you just double down on your lies. Let's take a look at a prime example from the Bezos-owned Washington Post (thread)

https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1587886994817941509

#Interviews | Venezuelan communards are building a better future through education and mutual care.

El Panal [The Beehive] is a commune in Caracas' working-class 23 de Enero barrio that has advanced far in political, educational, and economic terms. The commune was built by the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force, a collective with a long trajectory of grassroots work in the barrio.

This three-part series, based on numerous interviews, highlights El Panal’s history, its economic operations, and the ways it has worked to overcome the impact of the US blockade.

Read it here: https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15639

#News | The Nicolás Maduro government and the US-backed rightwing opposition are set to restart their dialogue process.

According to multiple outlets, the two sides will reconvene in Mexico as early as this week following a year-long hiatus. Opposition forces are grouped in the self-styled Unitary Platform.

The negotiations will again be facilitated by Norway and one of the early priorities will be the management of some US $3 billion in Venezuelan funds seized by Washington. The two parties will allegedly sign off on an UN-administered plan to disburse the funds for aid programs and infrastructure repairs.

The talks are likewise set to focus on conditions for the upcoming presidential vote, including electoral observation.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15640

🗞🧵Whenever we read a corporate media piece about Venezuela we expect a dose of misleading propaganda. Like you expect wetness from rain and incoherent gibberish from Biden. But sometimes the dose is just way too high. As usual, this thread is dedicated to
Reuters.

https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1588328677653508098

#News | The Venezuelan government rejected the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement to resume an investigation into alleged human rights abuses committed by state security forces.

“Venezuela regrets that, despite all the information provided and the fluid exchanges with the ICC throughout the year, prosecutor Karim Khan maintains a clearly biased view in relation to the situation in Venezuela, echoing campaigns that seek to instrumentalize justice and human rights issues for political purposes,” read a statement released on Saturday.

The ICC full-scale probe was launched in November 2021 following a suit filed in September 2018 by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition forces, with support from Washington and Latin American allies, accusing the Maduro government of crimes against humanity. The allegations were mostly based on the Venezuelan state’s response to the 2017 violent anti-government protests.

The Venezuelan government has reiterated its commitment to defend human rights and prosecute offenders and since 2020 has provided documented progress against alleged offenders.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15641

#News | Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called on the global community to act “radically and decisively” in the face of the impending climate catastrophe during his speech Tuesday at the XXVII Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Maduro’s 18-minute intervention largely focused on the urgency of the climate change crisis and the need to attend to the most vulnerable and those most hurt by its impact.

The Venezuelan president furthermore demanded action to preserve the Amazon and its biodiversity, calling for the world to turn to Indigenous peoples for guidance.

On the sidelines of the COP27 gathering, Maduro had a number of exchanges with world leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, and US Climate Change Envoy John Kerry.

In his conversation with Maduro, Macron committed to speaking with the Venezuelan president in the near future to discuss a “bilateral agenda”. The exchange was particularly notable given the strong support the French president once gave to self-declared “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15643

#Infographic | Amidst Washington’s economic siege, Venezuela’s communes have continued advancing to offer long-standing solutions to the economic crisis in order to build a socialist future where life trumps capital. Communes are, by definition, deeply anti-imperialist and anticapitalist.

Currently, Venezuela has dozens of communes, between rural and urban, some new and others with a baggage of revolutionary struggle. They are made up of people that occupy a shared territory and have historical, cultural, social, ethnic, and economic ties that bind them together. Some rural communes were set up after campesino families took back lands that had historically belonged to them but were seized by landowners for private profit.

Today, communes are a wonderful demonstration of socialism as a viable way to practice substantial democracy and build sovereign production while taking care of the planet.

In his last political address, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez stated that communes were the cornerstone of the Bolivarian Revolution, with the power to truly emancipate the people. He urged cadres and organizations to prioritize the communes with his battle cry: “Commune or Nothing!”

Check out our latest infographic! 👇

https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15642

#Opinion | In a context of economic liberalization, Jessica Dos Santos is concerned about a growing private sector mentality in state media outlets.

"On one side, you have a state enterprise wasting money to put make-up on its poor performance. On the other, the people charged with defending 'Venezuela’s truth' are more interested in securing sponsors than doing anything resembling journalism."

https://venezuelanalysis.com/tales-resistance/15644

#Opinion | From first-hand experience, VA's Andreína Chávez looks at the harsh reality and the media propaganda surrounding Venezuelan migration.

"Migration has become one of the many heroic ways in which the Venezuelan people have resisted the US blockade. I would know, my own family left as their living conditions deteriorated more and more under Washington’s economic terrorism.

My family’s migration story, hoping to find new opportunities in a foreign land, is not unique. Many Venezuelans left their homes in recent years looking for a respite from the countless hardships caused by US sanctions. These non-military tools have turned out to be quite deadly as they were designed to inflict pain and coerce whole populations into pursuing regime change.

In a nutshell, the US has condemned tens of thousands of Venezuelans to death and forced an unprecedented migration wave while holding the rest of the population hostage inside their own country under collective punishment.

It is no coincidence then, that migration began to grow in 2017 when the first economic sanctions were levied."

Read more 👇

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15645

#News | Venezuelan National Assembly (AN) President Jorge Rodríguez held a closed-door meeting with opposition politician Gerardo Blyde on Friday.

Likewise present were Gustavo Petro, Alberto Fernández and Emmanuel Macron, presidents of Colombia, Argentina and France, respectively. The gathering took place during the V Paris Peace Forum, a yearly summit that brings together world leaders, multilateral organizations, NGOs and other groups to advance “governance solutions” for global issues.

Concerning the restart of the Mexico-based talks, Rodríguez claimed the process was “on the right track” to restart soon.

Rodríguez highlighted that the Venezuelan people “have the right to live in peace” and demanded the lifting of US-led sanctions against the country. “No one negotiates with a gun to their head,” he stressed.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15646

🎙New podcast episode! We focus on a complex issue: Venezuelan migration. We look at the causes behind the exodus of millions of Venezuelans and the dishonest, politicized propaganda surrounding the issue.

Listen here (early access for patrons): https://www.patreon.com/posts/venezuelanalysis-74585599

Is Venezuela about to lose CITGO? 🚨

In early October, a US judge greenlighted a sales procedure for the US-based Venezuelan oil subsidiary, worth $8 billion dollars. 

CITGO, under the US-backed opposition control since 2019, could be seized by creditors as soon as 2023.

#News | A group of high-profile Latin American political leaders called on South America’s sitting presidents to reconstitute the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the regional integration body created in 2008 that suffered a significant decline a decade later following rightward political shifts in several member-states.

The letter’s authors—which included seven former presidents, current and former parliamentarians, former foreign ministers, and directors of international organizations, among others—made an urgent pitch to the region’s 12 political leaders to work toward integration in the face of a changing international climate.

“An integrated, non-aligned and peaceful Latin America will recover international prestige and will be able to overcome the irrelevance in which we find ourselves.” read the public letter published Monday.

In an exclusive interview, Guillaume Long, former Ecuadorean foreign minister and a signatory to the letter, told Venezuelanalysis that conditions in South America were ripe for the return of UNASUR.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15647

🎙️🇻🇪 In this new podcast episode, we focus on a complex issue: Venezuelan migration.

We look at the causes behind the exodus of millions of Venezuelans and the dishonest, politicized propaganda surrounding the issue.

Listen now: http://bit.ly/3UHWlqV

#News | Venezuela’s oil production rose marginally with new Iranian condensate imports as the two countries prepare to extend cooperation in several key economic sectors.

PDVSA is reportedly drawing production from new wells located south of Maracaibo Lake in western Zulia state, reaching some 98,180 bpd in October, although recent flooding in the area has hampered efforts. Venezuela has also continued ramping up Iranian condensate imports, which is used to dilute heavy Venezuelan crudes, adding to the slight increase in production.

Since 2020, Venezuela and Iran have strengthened their partnership to overcome US sanctions. Recently, high-level delegations from both countries held the ninth meeting of the Iran-Venezuela Joint Economic Committee in Tehran in order to expand bilateral dealings.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15649