Vol. 79/No. 12      April 6, 2015

Delegates came from across the Americas, including Cuba and the U.S., as well as from Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They were hosted by the Young Communists of Venezuela with support from the Youth of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the youth organization of the party of President Nicolás Maduro and former President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. The delegation included members from several university student federations that are part of the Continental Organization of Latin American and Caribbean Students.

Delegates took part in an anti-imperialist forum and visited a session of the National Assembly and a community center in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas. They heard presentations on programs of the Venezuelan government, including the PetroCaribe project, which supplies petroleum at well below capitalist market prices to Cuba and other Caribbean countries.

Shortly after the delegation’s visit, WFDY issued a response to Barack Obama’s March 9 statement that Venezuela is a security threat to the United States. The WFDY statement called on the “progressive and anti-imperialist youth of this world” to condemn Washington’s action, which “will only provoke a war,” it said.

Jacob Perasso, a delegate from the U.S. Young Socialists, told the Militant that the YS took part in the trip “because we wanted to make clear we stand with Venezuela against imperialist threats.”

“Even in the short time I was there,” he said, “it was clear to me that the accelerating economic crisis — steep inflation, shortages of food and other goods working people need — are products of the workings of capitalist property and social relations, which still predominate there.”

Perasso spoke at several events and was interviewed by newspapers and radio and TV stations. “I said we have a common enemy, U.S. imperialism, that wants to close space for workers and farmers in Venezuela and seeks a government that will do its bidding, including cutting off economic and social ties with the socialist revolution in Cuba.

“At the same time, Washington is waging a war on working people in the U.S. I pointed to the strike by oil workers, who are standing up for safety, and mobilizations against police brutality across the U.S.”

“I said that the Young Socialists and Socialist Workers Party are working to build a revolutionary movement in the U.S. to overturn capitalist rule and establish a workers and farmers government, as working people in Cuba did some 55 years ago,” Perasso said. “That’s the task of workers around the world.”

— MAGGIE TROWE