Vol. 80/No. 21      May 30, 2016

 
(special feature)

Washington uses crisis to push for pro-US gov’t
in Venezuela

 
Growing shortages of basic goods and medicines, a drop in factory production, out-of-control inflation and severe electrical shortages are fueling a deepening social and political crisis in Venezuela. Meanwhile Washington is tightening the screws, hoping to get a government there more to the liking of U.S. imperialism.

In March President Barack Obama renewed an executive order declaring the government of President Nicolás Maduro “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." On April 28 the U.S. Senate approved a three-year extension of sanctions against Venezuelan officials alleged to have violated “human rights."

These measures “go against the principles of non-interference in internal affairs and the sovereign equality of states," the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) declared May 5. The alliance, initiated by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, includes 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries.

“The Socialist Workers Party stands in solidarity with the working people of Venezuela," SWP presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy told the Militant May 18. “We demand Washington end its sanctions and oppose any interference against Venezuelan sovereignty."

The pro-imperialist opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable — which won the majority of seats in Venezuela’s legislature in January — turned in more than a million signatures May 2 in favor of a recall of Maduro to the National Electoral Board. The board has not yet ruled on their validity, and Vice President Aristóbulo Istúriz said there won’t be a recall vote, accusing the opposition of “fraud."

Maduro extended a “state of exception and economic emergency" May 13, charging that opposition groups were promoting hoarding, boycott, usury, shortages and inflation to destabilize the government. He said the armed forces would be deployed to guarantee distribution of food and other necessities. Maduro cited Obama’s executive order as an example of imperialist intervention aiding the opposition.

Henrique Capriles, who lost the last presidential election, on May 17 called on the armed forces “to decide whether you are with the constitution or with Maduro."

Since 1998, when Hugo Chávez was elected president, the government has said that it was implementing a Bolivarian Revolution and 21st century socialism. The U.S. government — which was never happy about close ties between Chávez and the revolutionary government of Cuba nor Chávez’s refusal to bow to U.S. demands — backed more than one attempt to overthrow Chávez, including a 2002 coup that was reversed after thousands of working people took to the streets.

But instead of mobilizing working people to take power out of the hands of the capitalist class and organizing workers to control conditions on the job — as Cuban revolutionaries did — Chávez put forward a course of trying to manage the capitalist market in favor of the working classes. Maduro has continued that course.

Cubans aid social programs

Chávez and Maduro used the nation’s oil profits — Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world — to subsidize housing, food, health care and social programs. Many of the social programs have been carried out with the help of revolutionary Cuba, which has tens of thousands of health-care workers, teachers and other volunteers who go to some of the most impoverished and least accessible areas of the country.

The Venezuelan government in return has provided cheap oil to Cuba.

The world capitalist economic crisis has had a devastating affect on Venezuela. A precipitous drop in the price of oil — which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings — was countered by printing money. Policies aimed at managing the crisis, such as price controls and a special exchange rate for dollars for companies that import and export, fueled inflation and shortages of goods, as many capitalists found it more profitable to speculate on the exchange rates instead of manufacturing.

The country’s oil exports fell 49 percent in 2015, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. A drought made matters worse, bringing the water level at the Guri hydroelectric dam, which generates 75 percent of the country’s electricity, to a record low.

Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, has tumbled in relation to the dollar by 99.1 percent since 2012. Imports of basic foodstuffs, including sugar, flour and eggs have declined. People have to stand in line for hours hoping to buy products, often to find empty shelves. The inflation rate is estimated at 720 percent — likely the highest in the world — up from 180 percent in 2015.

Starting April 26, Maduro placed most government employees, more than 30 percent of the workforce, on a two-day workweek to conserve energy. Public hospitals are exempt. The government has also initiated rolling four-hour blackouts throughout the country, and pushed the clocks forward 30 minutes to increase daylight hours.

Brewery shuts its doors

Polar, Venezuela’s largest food and beverage conglomerate, announced the closure of four plants April 29, claiming it could no longer afford to import barley, eliminating 10,000 jobs.

In response Maduro threatened to nationalize any company that does not produce. A handful of companies have been nationalized previously, carried out by the government without participation from workers. At the same time Maduro said he would ease price controls on some industries to encourage production and would eliminate middlemen in the sale of some subsidized products.

According to the Washington Post, in recent weeks there have been incidents of looting during electrical blackouts. AFP news agency reported May 11 that hundreds of people broke into a market in Maracay when they were told there were no subsidized products for sale, carrying off boxes of corn, pasta and oil. The market was guarded by soldiers, after authorities charged that products were being hoarded to sell later at higher prices.

“You can hear the ice cracking," an unidentified U.S. official told the Washington Post at a May 13 “briefing" for selected journalists.

But the pro-imperialist opposition is itself riven by factional disputes and Washington has little confidence in the opposition’s ability to stabilize the political situation, much less find a way out of the hole in the midst of the capitalist economic crisis. And while workers’ support for the Maduro government has eroded, the parties that make up the Roundtable are discredited. Workers know from experience that their talk of democracy and promises to improve the economy are a cover for defending the wealthy capitalists.

In an indication of the U.S. government’s hopes, Reuters reported after the official briefing, that “one ‘plausible’ scenario would be that Maduro’s own party or powerful political figures would force him out and would not rule out the possibility of a military coup."  
 
 
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