On Feb. 2, members of the Party
for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition attended a historic
celebration in Washington, D.C. honoring the 12th anniversary of Venezuela’s
Bolivarian Revolution. More than 200 people attended the event entitled “12
Years of People’s Democracy in Venezuela: A Tribute to the Bolivarian
Revolution.”
Speaking at the event were Deputy
Francisco Torrealba, a member of the Venezuelan National Assembly, and Cuban
Ambassador Jorge Alberto Bolaños Suarez, with a special message delivered from
Caracas by Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez
was elected in 1998. Under his leadership, the Bolivarian movement has made
incredible strides towards building a society organized around people’s needs.
From 1999 to 2007, extreme poverty in Venezuela fell from 20.2 percent to 9.5
percent, pulling two million Venezuelans out of extreme poverty.
Infant mortality per thousand live
births dropped from 21.4 percent in 1998 to 13.7 percent in 2007, and since
2005, 7,491 health care centers have been built. Nearly 3.5 million Venezuelans
have graduated from education missions and 652 Internet centers have been built
to promote computer literacy and guarantee access to information, a free
resource that has been used by over two million Venezuelans.
Ambassador Bolaños said: “The
Bolivarian People’s Democracy gave Venezuela to the Venezuelans. It has
obtained unprecedented social achievements where human beings are put as the
top priority, because millions of Venezuelan men, women and children do not
have to endure poverty anymore.”
The ANSWER Coalition cosponsored
this event along with a number of other progressive organizations, and
congratulated Venezuela for its remarkable achievements.
“We support not just the
Venezuelan revolution, but the idea of the Venezuelan revolutionary, which is
truly a transformative idea for people around the world, not just in Latin
America, but also here in the United States,” said Eugene Puryear, an organizer
for the ANSWER Coalition, in a solidarity message delivered at the celebration.
“The people of Venezuela, and now
the people of Latin America, have stood up to fight—to walk, to jog, and now to
run—towards freedom, towards justice, towards human solidarity, towards
socialism and towards a future where everyone in the world can live together
cooperatively, share and build a sustainable planet.”
The Party for Socialism and
Liberation congratulates the people of Venezuela for their remarkable and
inspiring efforts to build a people’s democracy, as well as President Hugo Chávez
for his ability to harness the revolutionary potential of the people to fight
against oppression and exploitation. Viva la Revolución Bolivariana!
