Hugo Chávez talked a great deal about seeds, both figuratively and literally. For him, the commune was a seed of socialism. More literally, however, socialism implied sovereignty with regard to both seeds and food production. In this section, PROINPA associates explain their efforts to produce seeds and thereby contribute to food sovereignty in Venezuela.

"Potatoes, along with rice, sugar, meat, and dairy products, are among the main foodstuffs in the world. In Venezuela, we have sovereignty in the potato production sector, though not in seed production. Although PROINPA has significantly contributed to Venezuela’s potato sovereignty, there’s still a lot of work to be done.

As [20th-century intellectual] Uslar Pietri wisely pointed out, “We need to sow petroleum.” More investment is essential to fully consolidate our sovereignty in terms of seed potato production," explains potato producer Gerardo (Lalo) Rivas Gil.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/open-science-proinpa-breaks-with-seed-dependency-part-ii/

Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez commended the “bravery” of the Puebla Group for its efforts to confront aggressions and unilateral sanctions against her country by the US and allied right-wing governments in the region.

The Puebla Group, founded in 2019 as a space to unite progressive parties and leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean, held its 9th Gathering in its namesake city in Mexico on Saturday and Sunday. The official slogan was “Moving forward in unity.”

More than 200 representatives from 18 countries, including numerous former presidents such as Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, discussed multilateralism, the climate change crisis, and regional unity in the face of an emerging multipolar global order.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuelan-vp-celebrates-puebla-group-bravery-at-progressive-blocs-9th-gathering-in-mexico/

The Venezuelan opposition has confirmed the use of manual voting for the primary election scheduled for October 22, rejecting the automated process offered by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

In a communique released on Monday, the opposition’s National Primary Commission (CNP) argued that on June 5 they requested a meeting with the country’s electoral authorities to define the technical assistance for the primary race but ten days later several CNE board members resigned their posts and the talks never continued. As a result, the commission carried on with self-organizing the vote.

Following the resignation of the electoral authorities on June 15, Venezuela’s National Assembly (AN) began the long process of drawing selections from a list of 104 candidates. The new CNE board was finally announced on August 24 charged with the task to oversee the 2024 presidential election.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuelan-opposition-insists-on-manual-voting-for-primary-election/

In Part III of our "Campesino Resistance" series, we delve into PROINPA’s educational initiatives and the impact of US sanctions on production and life.

"Sovereignty is about a country being able to determine its future without foreign intervention. US Imperialism is determined to destroy our revolution because Chávez tried to make Venezuela both independent and socialist.

In this beautiful highland, we are determined to make sure that Chávez’s dream doesn’t disappear. Our contribution here is working hard so that we are sovereign in terms of seeds. In doing so, we are also showing that sovereignty is not a chimera: sovereignty is what we are building now at PROINPA!"

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/education-science-and-sovereignty-proinpa-vs-the-us-blockade-part-iii/

Venezuelan social movements organized under the banner of the Palestine Solidarity Platform defended the Palestinian people’s right to resist colonialism and occupation following an offensive action Saturday carried out against Israel by Hamas and other armed elements of the Palestinian resistance movement.

“From the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the members of different social organizations, that are joined together in the Palestine Solidarity Platform, raise our voice in support of the resistance of its brave, noble, and native people who today, as always, fight for their liberation,” read a statement by the umbrella organization.

Naming Israel an “Apartheid regime which subjugates the Palestinian people in a much more cruel way than what was experienced in South Africa,” the communique pinned the blame for the outbreak of further violence on Israel’s flaunting of international law and the political, legal, and economic support of the United States toward Tel Aviv.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuelan-social-movements-back-palestinians-right-to-resist/

In his weekly TV program, President Nicolás Maduro condemned the genocide committed by Israel against Palestine, especially the bombing and blockade of the Gaza Strip. He called for peace and pledged to send humanitarian help to the Palestinian people.

📢 Our book on sanctions is available now!

"A War Without Bombs" aims to provide the tools to understand (and collectively revert) the devastating impact of the blockade on the people of Venezuela.

You can download it as a PDF here: https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/a-war-without-bombs/

Chris Gilbert is a Marxist scholar committed to the revolutionary process in Venezuela, who teaches at the Bolivarian University in Caracas. His new book, Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, just released by Monthly Review Press, is an engaging account of the country’s old-yet-new experiment in building a free, diverse, and humanly-rich society that is not bound by capitalist exchange-value production.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/the-commune-is-a-comprehensive-reworking-of-social-relations-a-conversation-with-chris-gilbert/

Washington’s sanctions relief has been exclusively directed at helping US and European companies to recoup unpaid debt from Caracas while the blockade against the Caribbean nation remains intact.

However, Bloomberg reported that Washington and Caracas have been engaged in talks since last year in Doha, Qatar, and the US government might be willing to lift some oil and banking sanctions against Venezuela. This could allegedly allow the Venezuelan government to reengage with financial institutions and recover around $3 billion frozen in accounts in Europe.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-oil-output-recedes-as-caracas-renews-us-sanctions-relief-talks/

On October 4th, Venezuela’s Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, announced a warrant for the arrest of Juan Guaidó on charges including treason, false representation and corruption stemming from his time as head of the US-appointed “interim government” of Venezuela. Guaidó is alleged to have exploited state resources to fund his parallel administration, resulting in the potential loss of a staggering $19 billion in public assets.

Taking to social media from the safety of his Miami home, he claimed in response that “this is how the dictatorship’s machine for promoting lies works”. Unfortunately for him, the US’ own court documents prove that this charge was factually based. Guaidó, in fact, did preside over the loss of at least $19 billion in state holdings through his management of Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA. How did this happen? How did a man, powerless within his own country, lose its largest overseas asset?

“All that was privatised”, said then-president Hugo Chávez of the telecommunications giant CANTV, “let it be nationalised”. Thus began the 2007 nationalisation wave that took control of mining, oil, and agricultural operations for the people of Venezuela. This move represented an important step in the Bolivarian Revolution’s promise of wealth redistribution and of changing Latin America’s peripheral role as raw material supplier to companies in the Global North.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/guaido-citgo-and-the-19b-hole/

🔴#BreakingNews | The Nicolás Maduro government and the US-backed Venezuelan opposition signed an agreement laying out conditions for upcoming presidential elections.

With mediation from Norway, the two parties met in Barbados on Tuesday, resuming talks that had been suspended for nearly a year.

The signed agreement saw the two parties agree to hold the presidential vote in the latter half of 2024. Other electoral conditions set out include the update of the electoral registry, the implementation of presently existing audits and the invitation of international observation missions from organizations including the African Union, the European Union and the Carter Center.

Furthermore, the two sides pledged to recognize the results, and that all actors should have full electoral guarantees. They also agreed that each party should be free to choose its candidate. However, the wording did not state that politicians currently barred from political office would have their bans lifted.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuelan-government-opposition-dialogue/

[UPDATE] The Venezuelan government and the Unitary Platform went on to sign a second, four-point joint accord noscriptd “Partial Agreement for the Protection of the Nation’s Vital Interests.” The text reiterates Venezuela’s claim over the Essequibo Strip and a rejection of recent actions by neighboring Guyana in granting oil exploration licenses in the disputed area’s territorial waters.

The two sides likewise vowed to “defend the assets and property” of Citgo, a US-based subsidiary of state oil company PDVSA. Valued at US $10-13 billion, Citgo is set to undergo a court-mandated auction of shares to satisfy a number of international arbitration awards. Former self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaidó and his associates have drawn severe criticism for jeopardizing the country’s most prized foreign asset.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuelan-government-opposition-dialogue/

Some time ago,[1] when facing the systematic deployment of the “caudillo” [leader] archetype by the elites displaced from power during the early days of the Bolivarian Revolution, I pointed out that this discursive practice followed a very particular hagiographical form. Of course, their point was not to justify what would be the equivalent of a “monarch,” but to summon a subject that would be capable of defeating the caudillo: civil society.

I wrote then, concerning this discourse: “‘Civil society’ is not just the obverse, embodying the interests of the elites being displaced, but also the reverse of the ‘pueblo’ subject of Chavismo, which still remains invisible, reduced, hidden. Unable, or rather unwilling to recognize any uniqueness in Chavismo, it [the discourse] invariably concludes that Chávez is a reiteration of the secular past, more of the same, the eternal caudillo (along with the masses), a reminder of how much barbarism still exists among us.”

In response to this discourse that “tightens and dehumanizes Chávez’s figure (deifying and demonizing him simultaneously) and relegates Chavismo to ostracism, expelling it from the ‘earthly paradise’ of politics,” I argued that it was necessary to “desacralize Venezuelan politics: the way its history is told, the way it is conceived and narrated.”

https://venezuelanalysis.com/columns/politics-of-the-commons-earthly-chavez/

The US Treasury Department emitted a license allowing production, investment and sale in the Venezuelan oil, gas and gold sectors, a move classified by the Venezuelan government as the suspension of sanctions on state-owned oil company PDVSA.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued four six-month licenses “suspending select sanctions.”

The announcement came on the heels of an agreement signed Tuesday between the Nicolás Maduro government and the US-backed Unitary Platform in Barbados establishing certain conditions for the 2024 presidential elections.

“In response to these democratic developments, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has issued General Licenses authorizing transactions involving Venezuela’s oil and gas sector and gold sector,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson wrote in a statement.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-praises-progressive-sanctions-removal-as-us-treasury-issues-temporary-licenses/

Venezuelanalysis stands with the people of Palestine

On October 14, socialist communards from El Panal Commune hoisted the Palestinian flags over several tower blocks in the 23 de Enero barrio of western Caracas. While Palestine may seem like a foreign issue in a distant land, the grassroots socialist movements see it very differently. Internationalism, solidarity and anti-imperialism have been core tenets of the Bolivarian Process since the very beginning.

Just two days earlier, hundreds of activists gathered in Caracas’ Plaza Bolívar to support Palestinians’ right to resist and condemn the latest genocidal attack on Gaza by US-backed Israeli occupation forces.

Whether in-person or online, there has been no shortage of solidarity initiatives from Venezuela. Chávez’s words from 2010 still echo very strongly as a shining example of principled internationalism at a time when all too many in power, especially among the Western left, fail to stand with Palestine Rather than seek refuge in the platitudes of international law and UN resolutions, the Venezuelan revolutionary leader called out Israel as a terrorist state.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/solidarity-against-a-live-broadcast-genocide/

Five opposition politicians and activists have been released from prison after the resumption of talks between the Venezuelan government and the US-backed right-wing sector this week.

Opposition’s chief negotiator Gerardo Blyde broke the news on Wednesday night by posting a picture on X with journalist and Popular Will (VP) party member Roland Carreño, who had been detained since October 2020 on charges of conspiracy, terrorism financing, money laundering, weapons trafficking and association to commit a crime.

According to Venezuela’s Attorney General’s Office, Carreño had diverted thousands of US dollars from the Simón Bolívar Foundation, the charitable program of Venezuela’s US-based oil subsidiary CITGO, to four major opposition parties. In 2019, the US government put CITGO under the control of the self-proclaimed “interim government” led by Juan Guaidó.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-authorities-release-jailed-opposition-activists-govt-hints-at-us-diplomat-visit/

María Corina Machado emerged as the runaway victor of the primary elections organized by several US-backed political organizations on Sunday.

The electoral process, which was self-organized and relied on manual voting, began early morning but experienced delays after several of the 3,000 polling stations had to be changed at the last minute and electoral material was not delivered on time. According to reports, several voting centers remained open past the official 4 p.m. closing time because of long queues of people waiting to cast their votes.

Once voting centers closed, the National Primary Commission (CNP) claimed that a server blockage had delayed the counting process. A first briefing issued at midnight gave a resounding victory to far-right Machado with 93.13 percent of the vote after 26.06 percent of ballot boxes were tallied.

On Monday night, a second report ratified Machado’s lead at 92.56 percent with 64.88 percent of voting centers tallied, representing almost 1.6 million people.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-far-right-maria-corina-machado-wins-opposition-primary-elections/

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who attended in person alongside counterparts from Cuba, Honduras, and Colombia, praised the condemnation of unilateral coercive measures, also known as sanctions, in the official statement.

“I thanked the governments attending this important day for their unanimous support for Venezuela in their demand for the total lifting of all criminal and illegal sanctions against our Homeland,” wrote Maduro on social media following the meeting.

The final declaration marked a departure from other recent statements concerning migration in the Americas, such as the Los Angeles Declaration, which has been criticized for falling short in meeting the needs of migrants. The Palenque Declaration, in turn, adopted a decidedly political posture and with an emphasis on human rights. The meeting in Chiapas did not include a representative from the US and instead featured the participation of leaders from countries where the majority of migrants originate from.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-celebrates-regional-call-for-end-of-sanctions-at-migration-summit/

Venezuelans will head to the polls on December 3 to weigh in on the country’s sovereignty struggle over the Essequibo Strip.

On Monday, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced the date and the questions comprising the non-binding referendum.

The Caribbean nation’s maximum electoral authority accepted the petition brought forward by the National Assembly following the most recent public flare-up of the longstanding territorial dispute with eastern neighbor Guyana.

Caracas protested after Georgetown opened up a bidding process for oil exploration in the Essequibo Strip’s territorial waters. An exchange of diplomatic communiques saw the Nicolás Maduro government accuse its Guyanese counterpart of acting as “an employee of ExxonMobil,” in reference to the oil giant’s major involvement in drilling projects in the area.

Venezuela has repeatedly accused Guyana of violating the 1966 Geneva Agreements that saw the two nations commit to finding an amicable solution to the controversy dating back to the late 19th century.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuelan-government-calls-referendum-over-essequibo-dispute/