#News | Venezuelan campesino leader Carlos Bolívar was killed on Thursday by alleged hitmen in Guárico state, prompting outrage from popular and rural organizations across the country.

“With great pain and indignation, we inform that comrade Carlos Bolívar was murdered this morning by hired assassins while he worked in Puerto Carrizalero-Camaguán, Guárico,” announced the Campesino Struggle Platform in a communique.

Bolívar is remembered as the leading figure in the rescue of Los Tramojos landstead, located in the Camaguán municipality, which became a symbol of rural communities’ struggle against wrongful dispossession by private landowners.

According to the Ezequiel Zamora Collective spokesman Ramón Soto, Bolívar had received public death threats since 2018 from local businessman José Elías Chirimelli.

Venezuelan campesino movements have repeatedly denounced a “landowner offensive” in the countryside in the last 22 years, including judicialization cases and over 350 targeted killings ordered by powerful landowners in an attempt to dispossess families.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15716

"The political will to address sexual and reproductive rights is very limited at the moment. Although there are some allies within the government, the correlation of forces is not favorable. That is why we have opted to open a channel so that the law will get to the National Assembly floor via popular initiative.

Venezuela’s Constitution has a provision by which a law that is supported by 1% of the electoral register must enter the parliamentary debate. As we speak, we are in the process of collecting some twenty-two thousand signatures.

In truth, it is altogether possible that – when our proposal gets to the National Assembly floor – it won’t be approved. However, forcing a public debate will be an important first step toward the social and legal depenalization of abortion."

With International Women’s Day coming up, we talk to a feminist lawyer about women’s rights in Venezuela.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15717

This very special podcast episode is dedicated to the legacy of Venezuelan revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez.

To understand his impact on Venezuela, we have to go back in time, to Venezuela before Chávez. What were the conditions in the country that opened the door for a figure like Chávez? What was it about his connection with the people that made him such a powerful leader? And once in power, how did the revolutionary project evolve?

Host José Luis Granados Ceja is joined by fellow VA member Cira Pascual Marquina and by Venezuelan intellectual Reinaldo Iturriza to discuss the Comandante and everything he represents.

Listen here: https://venezuelanalysis.com/audio/15718

Back in 1998, the year I time-traveled to rewatch the solar eclipse, the privatization of the oil industry was in full swing, non-oil sectors were deeply underdeveloped and the country had 50% and 62.1% of poverty and extreme poverty rates. Yet to this day, corporate journalists like to exercise editorial authority over our history and praise our “once prosperous nation.”

Taking into consideration everything I describe above, is there any doubt that Hugo Chávez, with his emancipatory and antiimperialist political project, won the 1998 presidential election with overwhelming popular support and that his first task was taking back control of the oil sector to pour those resources into our people?

Yes, Chávez's electoral win on December 6, 1998, is the most important memory I or anyone has of that year. A new era had arrived and it could be felt in every corner of the country, even in my small neighborhood, where the occasional eclipse had been the only thing that shook us from our slumber.

Despite the media underlining his military background and failed 1992 rebellion, nobody was afraid of “El Comandante.”

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15719

Ten years after his death, Hugo Chávez remains by far the most popular political figure in Venezuela. Why is that? In this video, produced jointly with Tatuy Tv, we look at the pillars of Chávez’s revolutionary legacy.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/video/15720

Venezuelanalysis' on-the-ground work is 100% supported by generous readers and followers.

Consider becoming a subscriber: https://venezuelanalysis.com/subscribe-options

Dozens of world leaders, intellectuals, and solidarity activists descended on Caracas last weekend to celebrate the life and impact of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The “World Meeting on the Relevance of the Bolivarian Thought of Hugo Chávez” gathered more than 140 international guests from 55 countries who took part in forums, conferences, and talks about Chávez's legacy on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of his death on March 5, 2013.

The gathering counted on the participation of political leaders such as Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves; Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega; and Bolivian President Lucho Arce.

Also in attendance were former presidents such as Cuba’s Raúl Castro, Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15721

Commodified housing, shantytowns, evictions and homelessness are worldwide realities and no matter how hard corporate media tries to ignore it, this is one of the most glaring horrors of capitalism.

In contrast, Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission (GMVV) has built over 4,4 million houses for working-class families since 2011, after revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez declared access to land and adequate housing to be human rights and the foundation for a dignified life.

The goal is to reach 5 million homes by 2024.

The GMVV’s reach hinges on popular power with over 70% of the constructions reportedly self-managed by communities, with financial and logistical support from government institutions. This helps to significantly reduce costs.

To understand its success despite an ongoing economic crisis under crippling US sanctions, we visited a women-led construction project that has become a staple of the social program and an example of grassroots feminism.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15722

🧵🗞The mass murder of Venezuelan civilians is here to stay. And so are (low) corporate media standards. The almightily generous Biden administration has moved away from Trump's "maximum pressure" by (you better sit down for this) allowing corporations to collect debts!

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1633714611110150146

"Communal enterprises must be efficient, but production is not the end-all be-all. After all, we are not capitalists! That is why education, both political and technical, is very important for us.

In fact, this is not particular to our commune. The law establishes that each communal enterprise must have committees for administration, finances, production, comptrolling, and education.

Moreover, in social production enterprises, there are no bosses: everyone is equal and decisions are taken in assemblies. That, in itself, is a school for socialism."

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15723

🗞🧵News recap

Elections on the horizon: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said presidential elections will take place (as constitutionally mandated) in 2024, shooting down speculation of early elections that Washington and the opposition have been pushing.

https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1635059931203375106

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro confirmed that the country will hold constitutionally mandated presidential elections in 2024, rejecting calls for an early vote from Brussels, Washington, and the opposition.

"I don't care what imperialism, the Right, or Europe thinks of the Venezuelan democratic process," declared Maduro in a radio interview Saturday.

The Venezuelan president’s shift in tone marks a departure from his government’s previous stance, which had been seeking a more cooperative relationship with institutions such as the European Union on electoral matters.

Presidential elections must be held in 2024 according to the Venezuelan Constitution, with the winner taking the oath of office on January 10, 2025. In February, a number of Venezuelan opposition parties laid out a road map to hold a primary contest in October to choose their presidential candidate.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15724

Campesino collectives took to the streets of Caracas on Monday to demand justice for Carlos Bolívar.

Bolívar, a longtime activist and spokesman from the Ezequiel Zamora Collective and the Campesino Struggle Platform, was assassinated on March 2 in Guárico state. He had spearheaded the long struggle to rescue Los Tramojos landstead.

“We are here to urge national authorities to open a deep investigation into the assassination of Carlos Bolívar,” Jesús Osorio, also a prominent figure from the Campesino Struggle Platform, told Venezuelanalysis. “This is one of the most emblematic land struggles we have seen and one where a powerful landowner has used his influence to subvert justice.”

“This can’t go on unpunished,” he went on. “There is a revamped landowner offensive in the countryside that is targeting us to seize land.”

Ramón Soto, fellow member of the Ezequiel Zamora Collective, echoed calls for a thorough investigation. “The situation needs to be clarified and those responsible must be punished, no matter who they are.”

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15725

Bye-bye CITGO? A mix of US aggression and Venezuelan opposition incompetence/collusion has all but sealed the fate of the Caribbean nation’s most valued foreign asset. In the coming weeks and months, foreign corporations could break up and seize the company.

In this infographic we look at how Venezuela’s US-based refiner got to this point, the present threats and what lies ahead.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/15726

🧵Things that we can take for granted in this day and age: climate change, death, and dishonest corporate media reporting on Venezuela. Here are a couple of examples from usual suspects
@AFP (https://bit.ly/3JlfeLM) and @Reuters (https://yhoo.it/3FqqXaw)

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1636251527407861762

Venezuela’s crude production continues to struggle amidst a number of obstacles resulting from wide-reaching US sanctions.

The latest monthly report from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) placed the South American nation’s output at 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) in February, according to secondary sources. The number is barely above the 696,000 bpd pumped in January.

State oil company PDVSA reported a nearly identical 704,000 bpd figure, down from 732,000 bpd the prior month.

Venezuela’s oil industry has been hampered by mismanagement, a brain drain and especially unilateral coercive measures from Washington. Since 2017, the US Treasury Department has levied financial sanctions, an export embargo, secondary sanctions and a raft of other measures meant to strangle Caracas’ main source of foreign income.

Output fell precipitously from 1.9 million bpd in mid-2017 to less than 350,000 bpd in the second half of 2020. It recovered in 2021 and has been hovering around 700,000 bpd for more than a year.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15727

"We are the government in this zone. That, of course, doesn’t happen spontaneously. The commune has to offer real, tangible solutions to people’s problems. However, the kind of self-government that we are aiming for is not just about solving people’s problems. Our variety of self-government is about real participation and communal autonomy. We cooperate with the local government, but it is not about clientelism or tutelage."

Second part of our interview with El Sur Existe Commune: https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15728

🧵🧵[Thread] Abject anti-Venezuela propaganda from an unexpected source: Truthout (https://bit.ly/3FyGSUj). Pretty amazing that an outlet with supposed high standards, where current and former VA members have published, would put out something this awful.

Read it here: https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1636967531440136192

🗞🧵News recap

An anti-corruption purge seems underway with reports of a number of arrests, including two judges, a mayor and the national cryptocurrency superintendent. More developments are expected in the coming days, so stay tuned.

https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1637514620750503936

🧵Dishonesty on steroids. Some outlets don’t pay much attention to Venezuela. That means that when content comes out it has a maximum dose of biased propaganda. Case in point here is the bourgeois mouthpiece that is the Financial Times (https://on.ft.com/40hOeDQ)

Read the (long!) Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1637693588715741185

#News | Venezuelan Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami tendered his resignation Monday after the National Anti-Corruption Police revealed alleged “serious acts of corruption" that led to the arrest of several high-ranking figures.

“In light of the investigations that have been initiated into serious acts of corruption in [Venezuelan state oil company] PDVSA; I have made the decision to present my resignation as Oil Minister, with the purpose of fully supporting, accompanying and backing this process,” wrote El Aissami.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who accepted the resignation, held a televised meeting with the leadership of the PSUV in the Hotel Humboldt in Caracas on Monday night where he spoke about the alleged corruption scheme that saw an estimated US$ 3 billion pilfered from public coffers according to media reports.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15729