Solidarity toast hails Venezuela revolution

Bill Mason, Brisbane

Chants of "Viva Venezuela", and "Viva Chavez" accompanied a toast to the Venezuelan revolution at the Activist Centre on April 16.

The evening featured screenings of Tommy Goes Caracas, about the solidarity visit by Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan to Venezuela, and The Revolution Will Not be Televised, which gives a graphic account of events surrounding the failed April 2002 US-backed coup against President Hugo Chavez.

The rest of Latin America and the people of the world are closely watching and supporting the revolutionary process in Venezuela, Ovideo Orellana, an activist from the Guatemalan solidarity movement in Australia, told the audience. "Each country has to do its revolution according to its own conditions."

"We think events in Venezuela are not going to follow the tragic path taken in Chile in 1973", Orellana added, referring to the military coup that overthrew the left-wing government of President Salvador Allende.

Orellana praised the example of the work brigade to Cuba, which has visited that country from Australia every year since the early 1980s, and urged support for the planned solidarity brigade to Venezuela from Australia in August.

Ewan Saunders, a Resistance activist who is planning to join the Venezuela brigade, explained that "some human rights that exist under the Venezuelan constitution are not rights in a rich country like Australia. For example, free health care is a right in Venezuela, but in Australia the government says it is too expensive."

From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005.

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From GLW issue 624