Photo: Venezuelans celebrating the reelection of Nicolás Maduro. Credit: Zoe Alexandra
On July 28, on what would have been the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan people voted to continue the Bolivarian Revolution he initiated by reelecting Nicolás Maduro as president. In a repeat of coup attempts in 2002, 2014 and 2018, the defeated right-wing has refused to recognize — without evidence — the legitimacy of the elections and have called on violent mobs, infamously known as “guarimbas”, to take to the streets and overthrow the democratically elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. For years, the right-wing in Venezuela, which has been cheered on by imperialist governments like the United States and mainstream media like the New York Times, have claimed that Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez and Maduro is anti-democratic and that the Venezuelan people clamor for change after 25 years of Chavismo. But what is the real story?
In the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of Venezuela’s elections, there were nearly 1000 international observers from over 100 countries that witnessed the country’s democratic process, a fact often ignored by the mainstream media. As witnesses to the democratic process, we were able to see firsthand the reality of life in Bolivarian Venezuela, debunk the tired lies recycled in mainstream media, and get a glimpse into the far-right violence currently underway. No matter how hard they try — including setting up targeted roadblocks to stop international observers from reaching the airports — the far-right can’t hide the reality of Venezuelan popular democracy.
While this election is a particularly significant one for the future of the Bolivarian Revolution, voting is no rare occurrence in Venezuela. Government officials and community organizers both celebrate the fact that this election will be the 31st held in Venezuela since the start of the revolution 25 years ago. This is in stark contrast to “democracy” in the US where citizens can expect to vote at most once every two years. Venezuelans regularly turnout for presidential elections, national assembly elections, constituent assembly elections, constitutional reform elections and even to democratically decide what community projects should be prioritized for state funding.
And how are these elections conducted? Voting in Venezuela is nearly fraud-proof, as voters go through several steps to cast their ballot, first providing their fingerprint, then voting on a digital machine, which then prints a receipt of the voter’s selection that is physically entered into a ballot box, creating dual verification for accurate vote tallies and a robust audit system. Further, the Bolivarian government has gone to great lengths to expand voter access across the country, creating hundreds of voting centers in rural and working class oppressed communities which have historically been disproportionately Black and Indigenous.
It is these same communities which have been the backbone of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s, (or PSUV for its Spanish abbreviation) support for the last 25 years. From its inception in 2007 by then-president Hugo Chavez, the PSUV has brought together a political coalition committed to upholding the Bolivarian Revolution as a process of peaceful transition to socialism in the 21st century, a socialism that is anti-imperialist at its core. The electoral victories of the PSUV over the last 25 years are the direct result of broad and deep organizing in the most marginalized, rural and impoverished communities. Following the 1 x 10 x 7 formula, the PSUV systematically mobilizes seven political, social, and cultural forces of the country, such as the Local Committees for Supply and Production (CLAPs), Indigenous and Aboriginal communities, Afro-descendant communities, civic-military units, and communes, among others. According to the formula, one PSUV supporter is tasked with mobilizing ten voters, seven of whom should represent each of these forces, and one of whom should be a new voter.
We had the opportunity to visit a mountaintop peasant commune in Carayaca of La Guaira state, a stronghold of Chavismo where the state has invested in local textile production, bakeries and agriculture. We also met with representatives from the CLAPs set up by the Maduro government, which are communal food delivery programs created to build local and democratic resilience to the crushing weight of U.S. sanctions. Highlighting the brutality of U.S. imperialism, the Trump administration in 2019 explicitly sanctioned companies which were supplying the CLAPs. We also met with community leaders participating in Direct Communal Social Ownership Enterprises (EPSDC), which are communally-owned production units tasked with supplying communities with basic services. The EPSDC model combats the speculation and exploitation inherent in the capitalist model, and empowers communities to develop a sustainable supply chain that circumvents the criminal sanctions that would otherwise keep communities from accessing basic services, such as gas for cooking.
We heard first-hand accounts of how these alternative production, supply and manufacture models have not only raised communities out of poverty, but have ingrained a political and cultural commitment to the forms of direct democracy that these marginalized communities had not experienced before the Bolivarian Revolution. Beyond increasing people’s financial resources and autonomy, the Bolivarian experiment under the leadership of the PSUV has committed to build people’s power through comunas, the basic units of political and economic self-governance, where people respond to their own conditions to meet their own needs. This form of self-organization and self-governance stands in sharp opposition to the reality of the United States, where working-class communities have no say in the direction of society, of our economy, or even in the identification of our own priorities. What we saw on the ground was undoubtedly a direct challenge to the illusion of “democracy” we are subjected to under capitalism.
The conviction of the Venezuelan people to defend their own path to socialism, reflected in the electoral victories of the PSUV, withstands the challenges of the economic sanctions and media war imposed by imperialism today. Despite the challenges that embarking on this alternative project has brought about, the Venezuelan people are committed to upholding their sovereignty. On the days leading up to election day, millions of people in Caracas poured into the streets to express their support for President Maduro, chanting slogans such as No volverá! — declaring that imperialism, foreign interference, and neocolonialism will not return. On election day, activating their 1 x 10 x 7 formula, PSUV supporters reminded us that direct, representative democracy is an everyday task — one that requires genuine conviction and love for its people. When we asked community members what they thought about the media claims about lack of transparency in their elections, they reminded us that it is us in the United States with the electoral college system who are subjected to a shadow democracy. It is no surprise corporate media and the U.S. government are threatened by a truly sovereign people.
The Bolivarian Revolution lives on.
