Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Venezuela - Between Revolution and Empire


On Sunday, August 15th, a national referendum is scheduled to take place in Venezuela to decide whether democratically-elected president Hugo Chávez should remain in office. The outcome of this referendum, while significant, is only a fragment of a much larger and longer tale of class struggle in Venezuela, where 80% of the population lives in poverty and the richest 20% control the majority of country's natural and human-produced resources. Far from being simply an electoral process determining the destiny of a leader, many in Venezuela understand the current struggle as a confrontation between the popular movements of the Bolivarian revolution against the Capitalist Empire. Media activists on the ground in Venezuela describe the situation as a potential brink of class war. The organized poor are prepared to protect, by any means necessary, the revolutionary processes they have been building at the grassroots level even before Chavez took office.


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