#Opinion | Venezuela’s Maduro government has slowly and steadily regained its diplomatic standing in recent years, overcoming US endeavors to turn the country into a pariah state as part of its regime-change efforts.

Nevertheless, Washington remains hell-bent on ousting the democratically elected Venezuelan authorities, and has kept its deadly sanctions program virtually intact. And Western media, which have cheered coup attempts at every step of the way (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 5/2/22, 6/4/21, 4/15/20, 1/22/20), remain committed to endorsing US policies to the bitter end.

This commitment was on full display recently when President Nicolás Maduro was hosted by Brazilian President Lula da Silva, in a major blow against the campaign to isolate Venezuela. Lula added insult to injury by condemning what he called the “narrative” of authoritarianism and lack of democracy that had been built around Venezuela to justify sanctions and regime change.

The Western media establishment’s initial reaction was straight from the five stages of grief. The New York Times, with its unenviable Venezuela reporting record (FAIR.org, 3/26/19, 5/24/19), was in denial, not reporting on the meeting at all. The Financial Times (6/4/23) had a depressed tone, citing the fading hopes of a return to "free and fair elections” in the wake of the Brasilia meeting. The Washington Post (5/30/23) flared in anger, claiming that by hosting Maduro, Lula had betrayed his promise to “save democracy.”

The reporting around the latest developments saw corporate pundits showcasing a full array of journalistic con artistry to defend their “narrative,” including dubious sources, inaccurate conclusions and dishonest context.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15793

#News | The Venezuelan government expressed its disagreement with the decision by the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to accept Prosecutor Karim Khan’s petition to resume a formal investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed during violent anti-government protests.

The decision comes days after Khan’s most recent visit to Venezuela where he met with President Nicolás Maduro and announced the opening of a technical assistance office in the country.

During Khan’s visit, the pair emphasized the complementary nature of the work of the ICC. The Hague-based tribunal is defined as a “complementary” court that should only open legal proceedings in cases in which national legal institutions fail to address alleged violations.

The Venezuelan government has gone to great lengths to demonstrate the state’s commitment to prosecute cases of human rights abuses from state security forces and thus avoid the reopening of a formal probe into alleged crimes against humanity.

The Pre-Trial Chamber I, made up of Presiding Judge Péter Kovács, along with Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou and María del Socorro Flores Liera, nonetheless felt that the domestic investigations being carried out by Venezuelan institutions were insufficient to satisfy the Chamber.

In its statement, the Venezuelan government reiterated its stance that the probe is politically motivated and forms part of a US-led plot designed to oust Maduro from power.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15795

#News | The Campesino Struggle Platform has voiced support for a series of measures announced by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to back small and midsize countryside producers.

“Venezuelan campesinos felt encouraged by the announcements,” Andrés Alayo, one of the Platform’s spokespeople, told Venezuelanalysis. He stated that small-scale producers had “resisted heroically” in recent years, keeping up the supply of food in spite of the US blockade, a deteriorated infrastructure, fuel shortages and other obstacles.

On Thursday, June 22, Maduro held a televised broadcast alongside Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Agriculture Minister Wilmer Castro Soteldo to unveil a series of policies focusing on the Venezuelan countryside.

“I’m announcing a new special fund to finance small producers throughout the country,” he said. “This is key, among many other things that we need to do.”

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15797

In this exclusive interview, Venezuelan poet Gustavo Pereira reflects on making poetry in the Global South, on the writing of Venezuela’s 1999 Constitution’s preamble, and on the role of culture in a revolutionary process.

"If a so-called revolutionary process does work to guarantee access to cultural goods, along with efforts at poverty alleviation, poverty itself will not be eradicated. Why? Because mental poverty is as harmful as material poverty. Moreover, a cultured person can be poor but not miserable: where there is culture, there is no misery. Being cultured and sensitive allows us to identify subtle mechanisms of domination– those of the mind – such as those in the content coming out of the Mecca of imperial hegemony: audiovisuals designed to exalt violence and primal instincts.

The government can and must work hard to increase access to (and production of) cultural goods, if a true transformation of the country is the goal."

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15794

Dozens of popular power collectives came together on Friday and Saturday for a meeting dedicated to communal democracy.

The “Reflections on Communal Democracy” summit, organized by the International Network of Communal Democracy, took place at the Panal 2021 Commune in western Caracas. It featured more than 100 participants from nearly 40 grassroots organizations.

The delegations that came from different regions of Venezuela were joined by representatives from Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) and Colombia’s People’s Congress.

The International Network of Communal Democracy brings together popular power experiences from Venezuela, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Catalunya, the Basque Country and Kurdistan to create spaces of debate as well as bring together like-minded emancipatory projects. It held a previous summit in Chile in November 2022.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15798

#News | Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) of seeking to “sow the deadly poison of fascism” in the country after senior officials spoke out against the political disenfranchisement of far-right opposition leader María Corina Machado.

"They want to sow the deadly poison of fascism, of hatred, of confrontation among everyone, through social media, paying millions to sow hatred, to try to put their claws on our country and hand it over to the US empire and to the old European racists and colonialists," denounced Maduro Monday during his weekly television program.

The Venezuelan president's comments came on the heels of a Monday statement from the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell who rejected the disqualification of Machado.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15800

#Opinion | "In matters of love, we often expect our significant other to know what’s going on without having to say it. We assume our partner is some sort of fortune teller, who must also accept our actions and attitudes even if they do not understand them. This is not the most healthy of habits, and can lead to relationships getting hurt in the long run, or not surviving at all.

For the time being, that is more or less the relationship between the Venezuelan people and the state. We live in a state of constant guessing, self-explanations, scouring under rocks to find information that should be available to all. Take one example: a few weeks ago, water supply in my community shrunk to the point of almost vanishing.

I’ve been living here for seven years, so I have experienced the ups and downs of this issue. In the beginning, it was terrible. Then it got way better, then worse again. Surely, each of those phases had a good reason, a thorough explanation (even if that’s scant consolation when you don’t have water). But no one ever gave one. We never know why it happens, what changed."

https://venezuelanalysis.com/tales-resistance/15801

#News | The Venezuelan Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) have launched a large-scale operation to clear out the Yapacana National Park, in Amazonas state, from illegal mining and other criminal activities.

According to official reports, almost 2,000 miners have been evicted since last month from the Yapacana area under “Operation Autana 2023.” On Monday, the armed forces seized equipment and material such as engines, fuel, 195 motor pumps, 18 electric generators, and destroyed 130 improvised housing and storage structures.

"They [the illegal miners] have been evicted voluntarily and their wellbeing attended to. They understood that nothing will prevail over environmental rights," FANB General Domingo Hernández Lárez told the press.

On June 30, 800 illegal miners were evicted from the "Mina Nueva" sector where the FANB dismantled four camps with mining equipment, mercury, and explosives. Only a week prior, another camp was destroyed near the area containing almost three kilos of liquid mercury and 292,000 Colombian pesos. Authorities also arrested 25-year-old Wilfredo Alexánder Yaramare Esteves over alleged links to criminal organizations based in Inírida, Colombia.

“Operation Autana 2023” was launched following Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s order to root out illegal mining from national parks in the Venezuelan Amazon region, which expands across the Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro states, south of the country.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15802

#News | Six corporations are set to join a court-ordered auction of CITGO shares following a recent judicial ruling.

On Friday, the Third Circuit concluded that Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA is the country’s “alter ego,” and thus liable for its debts. The measure exposes PDVSA’s US-based subsidiary CITGO to corporations looking to enforce international arbitration awards over assets nationalized by the Venezuelan state.

The court confirmed an earlier ruling from a Delaware District Court, rejecting an appeal from the Venezuelan opposition-control ad hoc PDVSA board that argued that the country’s “political turmoil” should warrant an outcome different than a 2019 decision that established the alter ego.

“Because reviewing PDVSA's other arguments would stretch the limited grant of our appellate jurisdiction [...] we decline the invitation and will affirm the district court's judgment," the Third Circuit’s three-judge panel stated. It is unknown at the time whether there will be a further appeal filed before the Supreme Court.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15803

Iván Márquez, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Segunda Marquetalia, reportedly died Friday in a Caracas hospital.

"The information provided by the group is that he died in a hospital in Caracas, where he received medical attention for serious injuries suffered in an attack in Venezuela at the end of June 2022," a source close to the Segunda Marquetalia told Reuters.

Neither Colombian nor Venezuelan officials have confirmed his death.

The guerrilla commander, whose legal name was Luciano Marín Arango, was a seasoned leader within the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army (FARC-EP) and a member of its secretariat.

Márquez was also the lead negotiator for the rebel organization in peace talks with the Colombian government held in Cuba and facilitated by Venezuela. The FARC-EP eventually reached an agreement with the government of then President Juan Manuel Santos in 2016, leading to the demobilization of the rebel organization’s forces under the supervision of the United Nations.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15804

#Opinion | In the past six years, US foreign policy towards Venezuela can be encapsulated in one word: sanctions. There have been other aspects to it, like the propping up of a self-proclaimed “interim government.” But economic coercive measures have been front and center, both in terms of their widespread use and their impact on the Venezuelan people.

The calls for sanctions relief have grown steadily in recent months, from multilateral organizations, some Democratic officials and even foreign policy experts. The first group points to the collective punishment of Venezuelan civilians, the second to the pressure on US borders from increased migration, and the third argues that the policies have “failed.”

It is worth laying out what this “failure” entails. US policies have certainly failed in their primary declared goal of triggering regime change and ousting the Bolivarian Revolution. But from a broader perspective, sanctions are generating some very significant long-term consequences that have begun to take shape in recent months.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15805

#Interview | Hegemonic feminist currents focus on patriarchal oppression, but racialized forms of oppression seldom enter their discourse. Merlyn Pirela is a Venezuelan Afrofeminist activist and organizer, and a member of the Afro-Venezuelan Women’s Cumbe. In Part I of this two-part interview, Pirela explores the historical forms of oppression and domination, and the Afro-Venezuelan struggle for emancipation. 

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15806