D’Amelio was addressing nearly 400 delegates March 12 at the opening here of the First National Patriotic Council of the Youth of the Fifth Republic Movement (JVR). This was the founding congress of the youth organization of the Fifth Republic Movement, the party led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

Activities to build an anti-imperialist world youth festival will be linked to resistance to the drive by the U.S.-backed opposition here to overthrow Venezuela’s elected government, the JVR leader said. “Venezuelan youth have been on the front lines of the campaign to unmask the megafraud of the opposition in the so-called referendum to recall Chávez,” D’Amelio told the delegates. They were likewise on the frontlines of the struggles that defeated an April 2002 military coup and a bosses’ “strike” a year ago, both aimed at toppling the government.

On March 2, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced it had discovered that of the 3.4 million signatures submitted by the pro-imperialist opposition coalition, Coordinadora Democrática, on a petition demanding a presidential recall referendum, only 1.8 million were valid. This was far short of the 2.4 million signatures required by law to hold such a vote. Daily antigovernment marches that took place the first week of March to protest the CNE decision were often violent. Protesters blockaded major thoroughfares in and out of largely upper middle-class neighborhoods in Caracas and other major cities, burned tires, and clashed with the National Guard. Nine people were killed during those protests and dozens were injured.

William Lara, a central leader of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) who was the head of the National Assembly at the time of the failed April 2002 coup, told delegates in a speech at the JVR congress that the government now has ballistics and other evidence pointing to “provocateurs organized by the opposition as the culprits for at least six of the deaths” during the recent antigovernment protests.

Demonstrations by the pro-imperialist opposition continued the second week of March, but were smaller and less frequent. Several hundred, for example, rallied March 10 in the Sucre municipality in Caracas.

The showdown between large sections of the working class, peasantry, and some middle-class layers, on one hand, and the majority of the capitalist class, on the other, is the third major class confrontation in the country the last two years. Two previous U.S.-backed efforts to topple the Chávez government—a short-lived military coup in April 2002 and a bosses’ lockout last year—were defeated as millions of working people mobilized in the streets, dividing the military.

After these two setbacks, Coordinadora Democrática launched the recall referendum petition drive, submitting 3.4 million signatures December 19.

The national government charged that the signature gathering was marked by major fraud. Evidence presented by government officials included statements by workers who said their employers coerced them into signing the opposition petitions under the threat of losing their jobs and forged signatures of people who have died.

The CNE announced that 1 million of the signatures submitted in the recall referendum petition could be reconfirmed by each individual signer showing up at one of 2,700 polling stations across the country and personally verifying their signature—leaving the door open for a recall referendum if enough signatures are verified. CNE officials pointed to massive irregularities in the petitions, including thousands of signatures obviously printed with identical handwriting. The CNE had announced that the dates for such a reconfirmation process would be March 18-22. JVR leaders here said that decision has now been changed and the revalidation process will take place at the end of March.

The JVR congress launched a campaign to mobilize its members and other opponents of the U.S.-backed recall referendum drive to serve as monitors in the polling stations and to visit hundreds of thousands of people at home where there is evidence of possible coercion to sign the opposition petition and try to convince them to show up and remove their signatures.  
 
Literacy campaigns
Two main political banners adorned the gymnasium where the JVR congress was held. “Venezuelan youth are present in Mission Robinson, Rivas, and Sucre,” read one. Mission Robinson is a nationwide literacy campaign launched by the government last July with substantial aid and volunteer trainers from Cuba. Its goal is to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to more than 1.5 million people who were illiterate—about 12 percent of adults in this country of 24 million people. Literacy classes are taught by about 100,000 volunteers, most of them university students.

Another 2 million Venezuelans have never finished basic education. Mission Sucre, which began last fall, offers free adult education courses to people seeking to improve their skills. Mission Rivas aims to draw young people who have dropped out of high school back to complete their studies and move on to courses at the Bolivarian University, recently established by the government.

About 1 million Venezuelans have graduated from basic literacy classes since last summer, JVR leaders reported at the congress. “Mission Robinson is the best tool we’ve had to reach out to millions of people with the message that they can take their destiny into their own hands,” said María de Caceres, a delegate from Maracaibo, in the state of Zulia.

Another major banner portrayed Uncle Sam shooting missiles around the world and read, “Bush: terrorist,” with a swastika painted on it. This view of the Bush administration is widely promoted by the entire left in Venezuela.  
 
International guests
International guests at the congress included Miriam Morales, general secretary of the World Federation of Democratic Youth and a leader of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba, and representatives of the Movement of Communist Youth of France, Young Socialists in the United States, National Democratic Youth Organization (EDON) of Cyprus, and Young Socialists of Canada. Otto Rivero, first secretary of the UJC, Kenia Serrano, the UJC’s head of international relations, and Javier Labrada, a member of the UJC’s Political Bureau, also attended part of the last day of the congress.

Venezuelan organizations with fraternal ties to the JVR that had observers at the meeting included the Communist Youth of Venezuela, Coordinadora Simón Bolívar, Participative Democracy, and the Venezuela-Cuba Friendship Association.

All the international guests gave greetings at the opening session of the conference.

“Resistance by the Venezuelan people to U.S. imperialism’s offensive in Latin America is vital to the Cuban Revolution,” said Morales. She said the number of Cuban internationalist volunteers in Venezuela, currently 15,000, will increase. Some 10,000 of them are Cuban doctors operating free neighborhood clinics in working-class neighborhoods and rural areas where working people have had little or no access to health care, Morales said. Others include volunteers training Venezuelan students who are teaching literacy classes, athletic instructors, and agricultural specialists.

The UJC and the World Federation of Democratic Youth have launched a major effort to organize as many as 20,000 young people to come to Venezuela next year for the world youth festival, Morales said. This will be a gathering of young people from around the world who are part of national liberation movements, labor struggles, fights by peasants for land, and other social struggles who will come together to exchange experiences and get a better understanding on how they can fight to win.

Morales urged JVR delegates to back campaigns by WFDY to expand support for the national liberation struggles in Palestine and Western Sahara.

Otto Rivero told delegates on the last day of the congress that “Cuba’s doors are open to Venezuelan youth.” About 8,000 Venezuelan students are now in Cuba taking courses on social work, he said, and another 13,000 have already gone through such classes in Cuba. A good number of the delegates had recently done three-month stints in Cuba and finished such courses. Another 10,000 Venezuelan students will go to Cuba once those who are already there return, Rivero said.

Rivero and Kenia Serrano met with 100 students at the Polytechnic Institute here in Barquisimeto on the evening of March 13 as part of a nationwide tour to build local Venezuela-Cuba Friendship Associations, especially on campuses, and to promote the world youth festival.

“Imperialist domination has created explosive conditions throughout Latin America,” Serrano said at the Polytechnic meeting, “and more and more of the people of Latin America are resisting. Young people must join workers and peasants to take the offensive against imperialism and in the struggle for a just society, a socialist society.”

She pointed to the experience of the UJC in organizing work brigades and other such projects in the year leading up to the 14th world youth festival in Cuba and an earlier such international gathering in Havana in the 1970s, as examples of what can be done in the next year leading up to the August 2005 youth festival in Caracas. Serrano said UJC delegations have recently visited Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay to build the upcoming festival.

“The Young Socialists in the United States have been and will continue to join Venezuelan working people and youth on the front lines in fighting the drive by U.S. imperialism and sections of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie to overthrow the elected government here,” said Olivia Nelson of the YS in the United States at the opening session. Washington’s foreign policy, she said, is not irrational, stupid, or the product of an ultrarightist administration. It’s the product of the profit-driven demands of the capitalist system itself, the economic and social conditions of which today are increasingly similar to those that marked the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“We can clearly see what Washington is doing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Korea, and Colombia—on the doorsteps of Venezuela—using its ‘fight against terrorism’ for wars of imperial conquest and to attack any people who dare to defend their sovereignty,” Nelson continued. “It’s more difficult, but important for those outside the United States to see the consequences of the exact same policies by the U.S. rulers inside the belly of the beast, which began much before September 11, 2001, and before George W. Bush was elected president.” These policies are driven by the U.S. rulers’ need to shore up their declining rate of profit.

Nelson pointed to the ongoing strike by coal miners in Utah and to the union-organizing fight by garment workers at the Point Blank company in Florida as examples of working-class resistance to the bosses’ offensive. “The Young Socialists are integrating in our work, as part of this proletarian resistance, defense of Venezuela and Cuba against the offensive by U.S. imperialism, which includes building the world youth festival,” she concluded.

Chrisanthos Zamanou from EDON of Cyprus said he was very proud that his organization had hosted a WFDY meeting in January, where the decision was made to organize the next world youth festival in Venezuela. He pledged that EDON would bring a large delegation of Cypriot youth to the event, “even though we are halfway around the other side of the globe.”

Natalie Doucet from the Young Socialists in Canada spoke about the role of Canadian imperialism in aiding the U.S.-backed drive to oust the Chávez government.

Among the other speakers at the opening session were MVR leaders, including Luis Reyes Reyes, the governor of Lara state. Barquisimeto is the capital of Lara.  
 
Class contradictions
Much of the work of the delegates took place at 20 roundtables, most of which were not open to observers. They included workshops on topics such as “the agricultural strategy of revolutionary youth” and “state institutions and policies to ensure the well-being of the Venezuelan people and youth.”

All of the delegates were local or regional coordinators of JVR clubs. Most were students. A good number were teachers or worked for government entities, like the National Institute for Land the Ministry of Education, or in mayors’ offices. A few were industrial workers or peasants.

In a number of interviews during the congress, JVR leaders indicated a range of views on what the program of the organization should be.

“The MVR was born as an electoral coalition to put Chávez in the presidency,” said Estebán René Carola, an elementary school teacher in Caracas. “The JVR, the youth group, is now being structured as a national organization, because in the past we focused only on elections. Now with the involvement in the literacy campaign and other social programs there is more need for a political organization.”

“We admire the support from Cuba, but we are not going to copy the Cuban Revolution,” he said. “The Bolivarian revolution,” he added, “aims to create social equality under the market system. There are good businessmen and bad businessmen. Many entrepreneurs support Chávez. The bad capitalists, the majority, are those who didn’t invest much here and siphoned their capital abroad. But there are many who provide employment and jobs. We have to work with them.”

This view was prevalent among most JVR leaders interviewed by the Militant.

Others said the class contradictions reflected in the policies of the governing party must be resolved in favor of working people, or no lasting gains can be made for the exploited classes.

“My father is the only cattle rancher in Barinas who agreed to turn his ranch into a cooperative, where all the 20 workers now share in the profits,” said Mariano Cadenas, a postal worker in Obispos, Barinas state. “There are hundreds of cattle farmers in Barinas,” he said, “some of them with large capitalist holdings. Most of them support Chávez. But they hate the Law of the Land and Agricultural Development, especially the provision that says cattle ranches above a certain size are supposed to be turned into cooperatives. And they have refused adamantly to implement it.”

While the existing capitalist social relations have remained intact under the Chávez administration, the government enacted a series of laws in the fall of 2001 that, if implemented, would benefit working people and cut into the prerogatives of local and foreign finance capital. The new agrarian reform law Cadenas was referring to, which grants the rights to titles and credits to peasants who have taken over land on estates of big landowners and are tilling them, was among these measures. Their adoption, and determined struggles by working people to implement them, are at the heart of why most in the Venezuelan capitalist class, with Washington’s backing, have not let up in their drive to topple the government.

Luis Rodríguez, a student from Barquisimeto who had recently returned from Cuba, expressed a view different from Carola’s in an interview. “What I saw in Cuba is a true social revolution,” he said. “I am becoming more convinced that unless action is taken to nationalize the factories and land as they did in Cuba, the poverty plaguing most Venezuelans and the growing unemployment can’t be confronted and reversed.” A small minority of delegates expressed such a view.

Organizers announced at the conclusion that the JVR had adopted by consensus most of the articles in the group’s constitution and declaration of principles. On a number of articles, however, where consensus was not yet reached, Wikénfred Oliver, JVR’s head of international relations, told the closing session, discussion will continue in JVR’s local chapters and regional structures for 30 days after the congress. Proposals will be referred to the national leadership for further elaboration and be submitted to another national conference.

In the final declaration of the congress the JVR condemned the “terrorist attack in Spain,” and extended solidarity to the Cuban Revolution. It called for a campaign demanding freedom for five Cuban revolutionaries jailed in the United States on frame-up charges of conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Cuban government.

A major focus of the JVR will be its work to defeat the opposition recall referendum drive and to increase the strength of the MVR in the National Assembly in this year’s elections, the declaration said.

Olivia Nelson and Natalie Doucet contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home