“We love Africa and every day we are more aware of our roots in Africa . . .
I am so proud to have this hair because it is African”
Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela – September 20, 2005
The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC) is clear that facing the vicious attack of the U.S. Empire, the anti-People’s alliance of Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador and NATO and with the U.S. organizing coup d’états against progressive and revolutionary parties in power, worldwide, Venezuela, a country some suggest, having a population of 32,624,284, populated by Indigenous Peoples and Nations (70%-22,836,999), Africans ( 8%-2,609,942 to 10%-3,262,428), Europeans (21%-6,851,100–Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Germans and a small Arab population)[i], as a matter of principle, requires solidarity and assistance from all Africans in Africa, the Caribbean, Central, North and South America and the world and from all Peoples who are committed to human dignity, liberty and peace with justice.
The Bolivarian Revolution rooted in the struggle of the Indigenous Peoples’ and Nations’ struggle against colonization with the African presence, is also an expression of the revolutionary struggle for Pan-Africanism– One Unified Socialist Africa. Venezuela is at the pinnacle of the Pan-African and international struggle against imperialism and Zionism. Therefore, the People of Africa and the African Diaspora are in solidarity with Venezuela and its revolutionary President Nicholas Maduro. This struggle is historic.
“In the eighteenth century large shipments of Africans were brought to Barlovento [Venezuela] to be slaves in the burgeoning cacao industry and to the sugar plantations in Zulia, around Lake Maracaibo. It was the site of intense cimarrón activity throughout the eighteenth century, with several Cumbe settlements established around Curiepe and Caucagua.” [ii] The African contribution to the struggle for an independent and sovereign Venezuela is traced to the fight to eradicate colonization and slavery. The Venezuelan Revolution has had an African expression since our arrival. African people’s revolutionary contribution to the Bolivarian Revolution will continue in perpetuity. It was within the context of the mass struggle against colonization and slavery that Simon Bolivar found traction to advance a vision and struggle for a united South America. Hugo Chavez inherited and continued that vision and struggle.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the U.S., displaced Spanish, French and Dutch colonialism in South and Central America and the Caribbean and the South Pacific. The U.S. then imposed neo-colonialism on the region, including Venezuela, in 1895. The U.S. used its Monroe Doctrine and a “Big Stick” policy (military intervention), later called “Gunboat Diplomacy” to impose its interests. In 1908, the U.S. organized a military coup and imposed Juan Vincent Gonen, one of the most sadistic dictators in Venezuelan history. The U.S. also imposed military dictators, throughout the region, some later trained at the U.S. School of the Americas. The School of the Americas was founded in 1946 originally located at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone. The School of the Americas was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) in 2008 and continues to train officers to coordinate mass military repression and murder. Through 1948-1958 the U.S. supported, armed and controlled the Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jimenez.
Hugo Chavez, in 1999, was elected President inheriting and continuing the vision and work of Simon Bolivar. He led the struggle to build a revolutionary political party and organize the Masses towards the creation of a revolutionary Venezuela. Because of the discontent of the Masses and of the struggle to politically educate and organize the People, progressive, socialist, indigenous, revolutionaries, including women became presidents throughout South and Central America and the Caribbean. [iv] It is with the advances of the Masses that the struggle by the U.S. to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela escalated in earnest.
With his vision of La Patria Humana or “Humane homeland”, [Hugo] Chávez launched a revolutionary program he called “social missions”, basically transforming all government agencies and ministries into missions to serve the needs of the people. Describing the social missions, Chávez said, “The missions, which I consider of strategic importance, must be a way for the creation of a new social state. We come from a bourgeois state. That state served the interests of the bourgeoisie, and even until today, special interests that oppose the revolution infiltrate the state. The missions should become an instrument to boost the transformation of the bourgeois state into a social state of rights and justice. The missions should generate a new spirit of service, where plenty of voluntary and creative work is performed; where public servants would act differently, with a new social and socialist spirit”. [v]
Hugo Chavez became the president of Venezuela and immediately fought to change the constitution of Venezuela to ensure that it was a product of the Masses aspirations, many of them African and that the natural resources and human labor of Venezuela would be to their benefit. Venezuela has the world’s largest known oil reserves, along with other deposits of gold, coltan and other natural resources. Under the leadership of Hugo Chavez these resources were used to benefit the people and his policies were and are a direct threat the interest of capitalism, imperialism and Zionism. Under imperialist exploitation, imperialism was the only beneficiary of Venezuela’s vast resources. With the struggle for socialism “social investment . . . reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to 27% in 2011, increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation. . .” [vi] Venezuelan oil assured that the Venezuelan government remained in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism.
In 2002 the US organized its first coup d’état against Hugo Chavez, which was re-soundly defeated by the Venezuelan people. On March 24, 2007 the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) was founded. The PSUV socialist policies and proclamations infuriated the U.S.
Through the funding of the counter-revolution of the Venezuelan anti-People Class through the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States Aid for International Development, (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), by George Soros, with his “civil societies” and other capitalist instruments of repression, protests of the anti-People erupted. They became more violent and sustained in November 2013. Historically, the U.S. has used economic, social, cultural, psychological, military and clandestine intelligence agencies to overthrow democratically elected progressive and revolutionary parties and governments in the Caribbean, South and Central America. U.S. imperialism has conducted, at least, 50 military interventions in this region.
The truth, as understood by the A-APRP (GC), refutes the lies spread by the corporate media, the Republican, Democratic, and Likud parties and other capitalist parties, and their neo-colonial allies and puppets. We denounce the immoral and unjust U.S. attack on Venezuela. As Pan-Africanists we know that an attack on Venezuela is an attack on all People of African descent and the alliance between the Indigenous Peoples and Nations of the Western Hemisphere and African people is one of principle. The A-APRP (GC) once again, expresses our solidarity with the Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Bolivarian Revolution. We are in solidarity with President Maduro, who has pronounced:
The A-APRP (GC) challenges all African progressive and revolutionary parties, organizations, and governments and all Peoples of good will to call for the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Venezuela also. The A-APRP (GC) is uncompromising with respect to our call for the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Venezuela and the world. We make no apologies for this call.
To deny solidarity with the Socialist Party of Venezuela, President Nicholas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution is to convey solidarity with U.S. imperialism and its allies and their racist genocidal coup d’état. There are only two paths, in this struggle, the path of the People or the path of the anti-People. Today, on the question of Venezuela there is no middle ground!
LONG LIVE THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION!
LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF VENEZUELA!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR PAN-AFRICANISM!
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE TO DESTROY US LED IMPERIALISM and ZIONISM!
LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE FOR SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM!
VICTORY OF THE PEOPLE IS INEVITABLE!
All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC)
[i] Nations Encyclopedia. Venezuela. https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/America/Venezuela/.html
[iv] 2002—Luis Inacio “Lula da Silva, Brazil (re-elected in 2006); 2—3—Nestor Kirchner, Argentina; 2004—Roosevelt Skerrit, Dominica; 2006—Evo Morales, Bolivia (first Indigenous President); Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua; 2006—Michelle Bachelet, Chile (first female President in South America); 2006—Rafael Correa, Ecuador; 2006—Manuel Zelaya, Honduras; 2007—Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina; 2008—Fernando Lugo Mendez, Paraguay; 2009—Maricio Funes, El Salvador; 2010—Jose “Pepe” Mujica, Uruguay; 2009—Dilma Vana Roussseff, Brazil
[v] Yves Niyiragira Pamazuka News. Voices of Freedom and Justice. Mar 16, 2016
[vi] https://www.indexmundi.com/venezuela/demographics_profile.html
[vii] Yves Niyiragira. Pamazuka News. Voices of Freedom and Justice. Mar 16, 2016