“The coup has already been defeated” declared Nicolas Maduro, the winner of the April 14 presidential elections, mid-morning on April 16. By that time, seven people had been assassinated by fascist bands who were activated the night before in attacks at headquarters of the governing Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), popular health centres and houses recently turned over by the government to displaced families.
Also at that point of the day, the call for a general strike did not materialise. The call was made by the fascist high command led by the failed candidate of April 14.
Luis Bilbao
It takes more than an individual to upset the international chessboard as dramatically as it has been in the past decade.
Forces unleashed by the logic of capitalism have drawn a new geopolitical map, in which the United States has lost its former place as the world's centre of gravity and the ultimate arbiter of the key issues of the economy, politics and war.
Yet, though changes of such magnitude were obviously not the work of one person, the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s hallmark was a profound intuition of this impending change.
Venezuela will not be the same after the formation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — whose founding congress concluded in March. Nor will Latin America.