Bruce Marlowe and Marcel Cameron
Australian interest in Venezuela is growing, boding well for the forthcoming tour of Dr Carolus Wimmer, Venezuelan MP to the Latin American parliament (click here for details).
Partially spurred by the United States administration's hysterical outbursts against President Hugo Chavez, more and more people are wondering what Venezuela's "Bolivarian revolution" is really about.
No surprise, then, that Nelson Davila, Venezuela's charge d'affaires in Australia, found himself speaking to 120 listeners packed into the room at Sydney's weekly "Politics in the Pub" on February 10. Davila, who was accompanied by Dr Peter Ross, a University of New South Wales specialist in Latin American affairs, treated his audience to a vivid sketch of the radical, socialist transformation taking place in his country.
Davila said: "We're going to build this socialist model because we believe that the capitalist model will be the death of humanity. We're building our socialism not just for us, but also for the 30 million people who live in poverty in the United States. The struggle of the Venezuelan people is the struggle for the whole of humanity."
Davila stressed the threat of US intervention: "The imperialists are uniting to attack us. They have their dream, too: the 'New American Century'. To do this, they need oil and that's why they're occupying Iraq. Venezuela is prepared to confront the US."
According to the charge d'affaires, 2006 will be critical for the Bolivarian revolution. "The US government needs to stop the re-election of Chavez on December 3. We believe they've already organised a military intervention for the month of May.
"Chavez has just expelled the US naval attache for spying, and the US response has been to expel the Venezuelan woman responsible for organising the distribution of cheap Venezuelan heating oil to poor families in the US."
The Venezuelan response? "Chavez has announced a campaign to distribute arms to one million people to defend the revolution. Ours is a peaceful revolution, but it is not unarmed."
Meeting participants showed strong interest in the coming tour of Carolus Wimmer. Wimmer is ideally placed to explain the role Venezuela is now playing in Latin America because the Latin American parliament will become an important site for initiatives of anti-imperialist unity by Venezuela, Cuba and now, after the election of Evo Morales as president, Bolivia.
These three countries are working closely with other governments in the region to develop a real alternative for economic, social and political progress in the form of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina have also signed up to some of these agreements, which take the "social missions" that have been so successful in bringing health and education to Venezuela's people to the rest of the continent.
The Australian tour by Carolus Wimmer is being organised by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network. To help publicise the tour or to find out more about the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network in your city, email From Green Left Weekly, February 15, 2006.
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