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

#News | Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has reportedly accumulated over 20 billion US dollars in lost revenue since 2020 as a consequence of dealings with unreliable intermediaries to allocate crude amidst Washington’s blockade.

An audit of PDVSA contracts has revealed that just 16 percent of oil sales over the past three years have brought in cash, with only $4.08 billion confirmed in received payments out of $25.27 billion from total exports between January 2020 and March 2023, according to internal documents viewed by Reuters.

The remaining $21.2 billion are unpaid bills including an outstanding balance in swap agreements with longtime partner Iran that should be settled through various exchange mechanisms.

However, an estimated $3.6 billion are potentially irretrievable after internal PDVSA sources said that contract documents show that executives had authorized unknown tankers to leave the country without paying.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15730

#News | The Nicolás Maduro government could be on the verge of selling Colombia-based Monómeros Colombo Venezolanos.

Colombian ambassador to Venezuela Armando Benedetti broke the news during a summit in Barranquilla this week, telling business representatives that Ecopetrol would reportedly purchase the strategic agrochemical company for US $300 million. He also presented an alternative scenario where only 51 percent of shares would be acquired.

However, on Friday afternoon Ecopetrol, which is 90 percent owned by the Colombian state, issued a statement claiming that it had not “engaged in talks” towards acquiring Monómeros.

The Colombian corporation is undergoing changes at the top, with chairman Felipe Bayón set to be replaced by Alberto Consuegra Granger on an interim basis beginning on April 1. Bayón had expressed disagreements with Petro’s government and voiced concerns that Ecopetrol was becoming “politicized.”

Neither Bogotá nor Caracas have publicly commented on Benedetti’s announcement. Maduro and Petro met in Caracas on Thursday for a “work meeting” but there was no further information nor a joint statement released to the media.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15731

Though there are plenty of mighty rivals, the New York Times remains the gold standard when it comes to imperialist propaganda. Let’s look at another example riddled with biased takes and outright falsehoods (https://nyti.ms/3LSaLDh) [thread]

https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1639875482526052352

#News | A US judge ruled Friday that four companies had the right to seize shares of CITGO, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), after they convinced the court that it was the "alter ego" of the so-called “interim government” of Venezuela.

CITGO, considered Venezuela’s most prized foreign asset, is on the brink of being broken up and seized by creditors pending changes to the sanctions regime imposed by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The potential seizure of shares stem from awards worth billions against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in international arbitration courts.

O-I Glass, Huntington Ingalls Industries, ACL1 Investments and Rusoro Mining will now peg claims totaling US $1.6 billion plus accrued interest to a court-mandated auction of shares belonging to PDV Holding, CITGO’s parent company.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15732

#News | Venezuelan authorities continue to push on with a wide-reaching anti-corruption probe centered on the oil industry.

On Tuesday evening, 23 detainees were arraigned before a judge and two public prosecutors. The arrival of the prisoners in orange jumpsuits was broadcast on state television networks.

The swift hearing saw them all subjected to pre-trial detention. The group includes nine public officials, ten businessmen and National Assembly Deputy Hugbel Roa, who had his parliamentary immunity removed by the legislative body.

The charges include misappropriation of public funds, influence peddling and money laundering. Saab added that those who worked at state oil company PDVSA might additionally be charged with treason. The group likewise included three judges, who were charged with corruption, but no connections between the two cases have been established.

The alleged corruption plot has been labeled PDVSA/Crypto by Attorney General Tarek William Saab, in reference to the accusation that US $3 billion worth of crude sales were diverted via cryptocurrency schemes.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15734

#Opinion | "If the Free Cover people seem determined to persuade us that their friends have a good time because they are winners, it is no less true that the officialists seem comfortable naturalizing the fact that only a privileged few can have access to stages and high-end events.

If, for the reasons mentioned above, Free Cover fails to recreate the joy of Venezuelans, in the case of the ruling party, the attempt fails to recreate the popular rebelliousness that was associated with Chávez. And this is so because, as happens with Free Cover, the ruling party is incapable of recognizing itself in a real country that can both sing Billo’s and celebrate the life of Hugo Chávez. A country that, in spite of its existence being denied by both sides, continues to exist and will not cease to remake itself while singing and fighting."

In his latest VA column, Reinaldo Iturriza explores the intersection of cultural trends with politics.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/politics-commons/15733