#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

#News | A coalition of grassroots collectives held a demonstration on Friday in Caracas in defense of labor rights.

The so-called Popular Front in Defense of Salaries (Spanish acronym Frenpodes), which brings together a number of leftist Chavista organizations, organized the mobilization to deliver a writ of amparo before the Venezuelan Supreme Court.

The document requests that Venezuela’s maximum judicial authority take action on two matters pertaining to working-class wages.

“We, as a group of popular, leftist, class-based organizations, decided that we needed to reclaim these flags, which are at the heart of Chavismo.”

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15807

#News | Roszarubezhneft is reportedly in conversations with Venezuelan oil authorities to strike a deal similar to the one PDVSA has with Chevron in order to take control of crude exports from its five joint ventures in the South American country.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15808

The wisdom and creative powers of the people never cease to amaze: Venezuelan grassroots collectives held a congress to advance democracy and sovereignty within their territories and build their own pathway toward a more just society.

#News | Heading the Venezuelan delegation was Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez who criticized the application of sanctions and the economic blockade imposed on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, detailing the severe impact of US and EU sanctions and calling for them to be lifted.

The CELAC bloc also disagreed with the EU’s unilateral decision to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give an address. Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean have been hesitant to wade directly into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite heavy lobbying by European leaders. Leaders from the region such as Brazil’s Lula da Silva have sharply criticized Europe’s arming of Ukraine, calling instead for a negotiated peace agreement in order to end hostilities as soon as possible.

Zelensky was ultimately not allowed to address the summit, nonetheless, EU officials sought a clear condemnation of Russia in their final communiqué but were unsuccessful in achieving consensus between all states.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15809

One of the first things you hear in therapy is that in order to heal you need to recognize the internal issues that are stopping you from achieving that goal, such as self-sabotage or lack of boundaries, alongside external traumatic events that caused you harm in the first place, turning you into someone you don’t recognize anymore. The first ones are factors that we can control, making them all the more important.

Could a therapy session be applied to an entire government? This might sound like a joke, but bear with me. I truly believe that this exercise could be beneficial for everyone affected by the external and internal issues that plague our country and elected leaders.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15810

A Black activist reflects on racial issues and the Afrofeminist movement in the Caribbean nation.

"The Afro-Venezuelan Women’s Cumbe was born to promote an Afrofeminist perspective, and it remains important force to this day, although the crisis and the pandemic were a blow to the organization. We are now focusing on mutual care and the revival of some of our traditions, including culinary ones. That, of course, doesn't mean that we gave up the big fight, but we realized that mutual care is a must for the continuity of the movement."

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/15811

Delaware District Judge Leonard P. Stark has determined that a court-ordered sale of CITGO shares will begin on October 23.

Venezuela’s US-based oil subsidiary faces the possibility of being broken up to satisfy claims related to international arbitration awards in favor of multinational corporations.

The court-mandated auction of CITGO shares was set in motion in October 2022 following a long-drawn legal battle initiated by Canadian miner Crystallex to collect an outstanding US $1 billion out of a $1.4 billion award granted by the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in 2016 as compensation for the 2008 nationalization of a gold mine in Venezuela.

The sale will likewise settle $1.3 billion owed of a $2 billion award granted by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) to oil firm ConocoPhillips. In early July, the refiner suffered another setback when the Third Circuit appeals court ruled that state oil company PDVSA is Venezuela’s “alter ego” and thus, along with its subsidiaries, liable for the country’s debts.

The decision will allow six other corporations owed a combined $4 billion from ICSID awards to tag their claims to the Delaware share auction proceedings.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15812

At the end of June, dozens of popular power collectives gathered at the El Panal Commune in western Caracas to participate in the “Reflections on Communal Democracy” summit. It was a space to reflect and debate on the progress and challenges for the construction of socialism in Venezuela.

In this podcast episode, José Luis was joined by Dahís Suárez and Iván Tamariz, from the Panal 2021 Commune which hosted the event. He likewise chatted with fellow VA member Cira Pascual Marquina on the debates that took place and the bigger picture of grassroots struggles in Venezuela.

Become a patron for early access: https://www.patreon.com/posts/86552243

"In 2009, the same year that he launched the communal project in Venezuela, Hugo Chávez attended the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen. He spoke brilliantly there, joking that if the climate were a bank, it would have been rescued already. Riffing on Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Chávez argued that there was a “specter” haunting the conference and it was “capitalism.” He also mentioned that one of the best slogans he had heard in the street protests taking place around the event was “Don’t change the climate, change the system!” In his talk, which was well received by activists around the world, Chávez never mentioned the new project of building socialism with the commune as “its basic cell” that he had kickstarted that summer, but the fact is that the project of communal socialism that was emerging in Venezuela at that time is precisely the kind of system change that could save the climate and the Earth System more generally."

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15813

🧵🧵Worse than a broken clock... Even when it wants to state the obvious, in this case that sanctions are a terrible and wrong policy, the New York Times remains fully draped in US exceptionalism. The corporate media are an active front of the US empire.

Read the thread: https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1683727073628631043

Venezuelan Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea announced Friday that the country is in advanced negotiations with foreign firms to develop its natural gas reserves. The announcement comes as Venezuela seeks to increase its productive capacity after years of under-investment as a result of US sanctions.

"Our goal is to explore, produce, refine and export every product we can," said Tellechea during an address at a business chamber expo.

The Venezuelan oil minister added that he expects the country to finally hit the 1 million barrel per day benchmark this year, a goal that has eluded the state-owned oil company PDVSA in the recent term. Officials reported that the country was producing approximately 735,000 barrels per day (bpd) in June, the highest registered since early 2020. Tellechea claimed Friday that figure had increased to 831,000 bpd.

Upon taking office, Tellechea quickly ordered the temporary suspension of all oil export contracts following corruption allegations involving PDVSA that led to a string of arrests and the resignations of senior officials, including his predecessor, Tareck El Aissami. Tellechea claimed that the country presently no longer has any suspended contracts.

Under severe US sanctions, the Caribbean nation’s oil industry has been plagued by unreliable intermediaries that have seen the new leadership overhaul contracts and demand upfront payments. PDVSA has nonetheless maintained its productive operations, with Tellechea stating Friday that the oil company would continue to press forward despite the ongoing anti-corruption drive.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15814

🎙🇻🇪 The latest delivery of the Venezuelanalysis podcast reports on a recent summit dedicated to "communal democracy" and the efforts to build socialism in Venezuela.

Listen to the full episode here: https://venezuelanalysis.com/audio/15815

Last June saw eastern Venezuela suffer terrible rains. They wreaked havoc in the most impoverished areas of Anzoátegui state.

My mind instantly traveled to November 2010. At that time, I was in the midst of my 360 hours of mandatory internship (part of journalism studies) in a Venezuelan media outlet. Even getting to work was a challenge, it looked like the sky fell on us every morning.

The days went on and the rains showed no sign of stopping. On December 1st, 2010, Chávez came out on a broadcast to declare a “state of national emergency” and immediately took to the streets to witness the scene first-hand.

That day was the first time I went to Antímano, a sector full of barrios and shacks in western Caracas that I knew nothing about. In fact, all I had heard was that close by, and in a very contrasting fashion, lay the famous and fancy-looking Andrés Bello Catholic University.

That day I also saw Chávez up close and personal. He arrived in a military jeep, picked up a baby named Samuel, asked about his dad, and was outraged to find out that the father had abandoned his child. He drove up and up and up into the barrio, got down from his car and continued on foot alongside the people in every sector. He asked questions, he listened, all while his bodyguards and ministers struggled to keep up.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/tales-resistance/15817

Hugo Chávez was born on July 28, 1954. A brilliant politician and a social justice warrior, he became the leader of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, inspiring people from around the world to fight for love and equality.

On this day, we want to remember some of his lessons: https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1684916334193156096

A coalition of LGBTQI+ and human rights organizations have rejected the criminalization of 33 men arrested during a raid on a private sauna located in Valencia, Carabobo state.

The arrests took place on Sunday, July 23, after the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) raided the Avalon Man Club, a bar sauna frequently visited by the LGBTQI+ community, where the 30 men, two masseurs and the owner were present. According to the local press, the police came after receiving a call from neighbors complaining of disturbances.

However, a family member of one detainee told the press that the sauna is not surrounded by houses but by other businesses that only open in the morning.

The police reportedly tried to blackmail the establishment owner by denouncing that an orgy was being filmed inside the place after finding condoms, private sexual videos on some phones, and five clients in towels using the sauna area. According to local sources, the Avalon Man Club receives contraceptive donations from LGBTQI+ collectives to give away to visitors.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15818

The International People’s Tribunal on US Imperialism held a session in Caracas on Friday dedicated to unilateral coercive measures and their consequences on Venezuela.

The tribunal, which focuses on “sanctions, blockades and economic coercive measures,” brought a 14-person delegation to the Caribbean country. The team featured academics, lawyers and activists, including representatives from the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).

Former Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia, who currently serves as secretary-general of the ALBA alliance, offered the event’s opening words and recalled the Hugo Chávez-led regional integration efforts.

“Today, in spite of the difficult conditions, we remain committed to solidarity, integration and regional unity,” he told those present.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15819

The history of the Communes is the history of the organization of the working class. But not the working class in an abstract sense, but that of the really existing one in a specific historical moment.

Both the available documentary record and the testimony of organizers allow us to conclude that Hugo Chávez, and certainly the most astute members of the Bolivarian movement, fully understood the need, to unite and organize, to interpellate and be interpellated by what Chávez then referred to as the "marginal classes," that is, the poorest among the poor, that fraction of the working class that was excluded thrice over: from the formal labor market, from citizenship, and from the market economy, and which, by the mid-1990s, constituted the majority of the workforce in Venezuela.

Much has been said about the immense effort by the Bolivarian government during the first decade of this century to address the historically accumulated "social debt." However, before then, during the preceding decade, Chávez and the Bolivarian movement set out to address a more pressing debt: the political one.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/politics-commons/15820

A joint offshore gas project between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago has stalled as a result of the Nicolás Maduro government's rejection of stringent terms that flow from US sanctions on the country.

“The Venezuelans have not accepted the terms laid down by the Americans. That is the long and short of it,” said Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley during an interview Thursday in local media.

Caracas is currently engaged in negotiations with Port of Spain to export natural gas from the offshore Dragon field, which has 4.2 trillion cubic feet (tcf) worth of deposits. The operations would be run by Dutch multinational corporation Shell.

Any deal is subject to US approval via the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as a result of US sanctions on Venezuela that effectively constitute a blockade of the country's hydrocarbon industry.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15821

A lot of people have told me that as a leftist woman, I shouldn’t write or even care about these things. Many think that gender is an imperialist construct, an ideology being imposed on the Global South as if we were idiots. What is actually being imposed is the fascist anti-rights movement that is also against women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Truth is, the LGBTQI+ community has always existed and will continue to exist and the fight for its rights in Venezuela began decades ago. It precedes any “gender ideology” fiction.

Another common complaint is, “Why focus on this? It doesn’t have any impact on the world and its problems.” Except it does. Everybody benefits from a society that is more accepting and less discriminating. When we affirm the rights of a minority, such as the LGBTQI+ community, we open the path for every other minority group. When women and black people earned political and economic rights, everybody won because we became more democratic, even if there’s still a lot to do regarding racism and gender inequality.

You can think about LGBTQI+ inclusion the same way as a building that has access for people with different disabilities. It won’t affect you or make you disabled, but it will positively affect a bunch of other people. Everyone gets to enter the building with their humanity intact.

More importantly, legislating for queer people to have the same rights as everybody else would reduce homophobia and violence against this community, which is a huge problem right now. According to the Venezuelan Observatory of LGBTIQ+ Violence, last year there were 97 cases of violence, including 11 murders. The aggressors were mostly heterosexual men, civilians, but also state security officers. The crimes happened everywhere: public parks, workplaces, restaurants, radio stations… anywhere where everyday life occurs.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15822

The Venezuelan government has put in motion an emergency plan to clean and reduce oil spills in Maracaibo Lake, western Zulia state, following alarming reports from the scientific community.

On July 24, President Nicolás Maduro announced the approval of resources to rescue the largest lake in South America, which in recent years has been affected by increasing crude spills from corroded pipelines as well as the proliferation of microalgae called verdigris that release toxins and bad odors as a result of waste, untreated sewage and industrial waters dumped into the lake.

“I have received reports about oil spills in Lake Maracaibo and how they have impacted the fishing community and the general [environmental] habitat. With the support of scientists, technicians and ministers, I have created a special plan of attention and recovery,” said Maduro during a speech for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Maracaibo.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15823